The United Kingdom’s first stock market listed cinema chain Cineworld has reported a profit for the first half of 2007 on the back of blockbusters and home-grown hits such as “Hot Fuzz” and “Mr Bean’s Holiday“. However, it was mainly the Hollywood blockbuster in the early summer that buoyed the exhibitor, who entered the stock market in April this year. Here is what the Press Association had to say about it:

Blockbuster box office hits such as the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film, Spiderman 3 and Shrek The Third also helped admissions rise 8% on a year earlier to 21.7 million.

Pre-tax profits for the period rose to £5.1 million from a loss of £6 million a year earlier while group revenues increased 4.1% to £135.7 million as Cineworld benefited from weak comparisons with trading in 2006 when hot weather and the World Cup kept film fans out of cinemas.

Chiswick-based Cineworld added that future instalments of film franchises including James Bond, Harry Potter, Batman and the Chronicles of Narnia had led to increasing confidence for its performance in 2008.

Cineworld has also seen profits pick up from showing successful foreign language films such as “The Lives of Others“, “Tell No One” and “La Vie En Rose“, as well as screening more Indian-produced Bollywood films.

However, it is up to ShareCast to point out that Cineworld “needed the benefit of a sale and leaseback of cinema sites in Southampton and Swindon to move into the black.” Cineworld gained £8m from this scheme, which means that without it Cineworld would have made a £3.1m loss.