British cinemas enjoyed a blockbuster weekend at the box office, in part due to the success of Sony's animated comedy <em>Peter Rabbit 2.</em> Overall box office collections at the weekend came in at more than £7 million ($9.91m), exceeding expectations. That compares with a box office earning of £16.6m for the whole of May 2019 before the Covid-19 crisis. Box office revenue slumped by 76 per cent year-on-year to £297m in 2020, the lowest on record in modern times. Cineworld, the world's second-largest cinema operator after AMC, said trading had topped its expectations, encouraging it to forecast a strong performance next week, too, when Disney's <em>Cruella</em> and Paramount thriller <em>A Quiet Place 2</em> are released. Shares in Cineworld, the only UK-listed cinema chain, were up more than 3 per cent. London's Odeon Cinemas said it had sold more than 300,000 tickets since reopening last week, its busiest week in more than a year and more than double the attendance of any weekend between July and November last year. Nearly two thirds of customers watched <em>Peter Rabbit 2</em>, Odeon said. A successful vaccination drive has allowed the UK to ease restrictions over the past few months, with the next phase set for June. "Cinema operators have been waiting for this moment for a long time, keeping their fingers crossed that consumers would feel confident enough to return to the big screen," analysts at broker AJ Bell said. "It looks like people have missed the experience and we've just had a bumper weekend for cinema visits." AJ Bell analysts said the bad weather in Britain at the weekend could have played a role in people visiting cinemas. They said Britons might prefer to be outdoors when the sun is out. The analysts said not many big films were lined up for release until later in the summer. "This suggests Cineworld will still have to keep its fingers crossed that the past weekend's trading boost wasn't a one-off," they said.
