Rapturous reviews, a dead star and Batman’s global familiarity will all help to sell The Dark Knight, but it is the crashing economy that could do the most for its success. Cinema tickets are the leisure industry’s equivalent of ties and lipstick, which enjoy better sales when looming job cuts encourage employees to smarten up.

Phil Clapp, head of the Cinema Exhibitors’ Association, said that cinema attendances rose during downturns at the end of the 1970s and start of the 1990s. “The box office seems to be resistant to recession,” he said. “In relative terms the cinema is a cheap night out, and in times of general doom and gloom people look for things that cheer them up and help them to escape it all. Cinema does that.”

With cash-strapped Britons choosing to holiday at home and summer releases of films such as WALL.E, pictured, the prospects for cinema chains - if not for the economy as a whole - are positively buoyant.

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