Hungarian cinemas achieved a revenue of 20 billion forints (71.2 million U.S. dollars) last year, 97 million forints more compared with 2017, with nearly 14 million moviegoers, according to official data published here on Tuesday.

"The higher income has been generated by less people, as 319,000 less tickets were purchased than in 2017," the Association of Film Distributors declared in a statement.

But the growth rate is not as fast as in 2017, according to the statement. "After outstanding results in 2017, 2018 has brought a little halt, which was due to the fact that Star Wars: The last Jedi had blasted box office with nearly 1.13 billion forints of income by itself in 2017, but 2018 saw no new episode of the epic science fiction cult film."

According to the statement, there had been one positive effect of the "Star Wars-free" year, namely that the distribution of revenue among the success films were less concentrated: seven movies made over 500 million forints in 2018, versus only four in 2017. (1 U.S. dollar = 281 forints)