The wettest, dullest June for over a decade seems to have sent us all scurrying for the comfort of our home cinema set-ups. Sales and rentals of DVDs were up, and the number of movies being bought showed its fastest growth this year.
We bought almost 40% more DVDs this June than in the same month last year, and rented almost 5% more. New releases were up almost 50%, and sales of back catalogue titles up over 35%, meaning that 108m DVDs were sold in the UK in the first six months of the year.
The British Video Association, announcing the figures, said that some of the boost was due to the arrival of strongly-performing new titles such as Hot Fuzz, which shifted the better part of a million copies during the month, and Charlotte's Web, at almost 300,000 sales in three weeks.
Specialist entertainment retailers such as HMV and Virgin accounted for over 32% of total sales in the first half of the year, pipped by the supermarkets at almost 34%.
The best-selling title of the year so far is Casino Royale, which has clocked up 2.2m sales, with The Queen and Happy Feet also in the Top 10. And sequels at the cinema are doing good business for titles – Shrek and Shrek 2, the Die Hard trilogy and Ocean's 12 all re-entered the Top 30.
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