Reports of the death of cinema may have been exaggerated as new statistics show that the number of people enjoying the big screen in 2017 was the highest in the last five years.

According to the National Statistics Office, the eight active cinemas in Malta and Gozo registered 760,000 admissions last year.

That figure is more than 90,000 higher than in 2016, and the greatest since 2012, when box office admissions soared above 780,000.

Of the 409 film titles projected throughout the year, family-friendly pictures tended to fare best, making up eight of the 10 most-attended films – the notable exceptions being The Fate of the Furious in second place and Fifty Shades Darker in fourth.

Beauty and the Beast was the overall winner, drawing 64,000 viewers, or 8.4 per cent of all film-goers last year, ahead of other top performers like Despicable Me 3, Paddington and Sing.

Overall, fiction and animation categories accounted between them for the more than 97 per cent of all admissions.

American films dominated the box office, with just under 87 per cent of cinema-goers opting for picks from the US, even though EU films were in greater supply.

Of the 409 films shown, 170 films were American, and 181 were from the EU, but while over 657,000 watched the former, only 67,000 went to the latter.

One reason for this is that US films were screened an average of 246 times, EU films only 37 times.

Maltese films, of which there were 11 screened, attracted 11,710 viewers, just 1.5 per cent of the total.

Films in 3D accounted for nearly a quarter of total admissions, with non-3D holding the lion’s share of 76.3 per cent.

The figures also show that cinemas employed an average of 177 persons last year, down slightly from the previous year, with the majority on a part-time basis.