U.K. riots hit box office

A shopkeeper sweeps in front of her boarded-up property in London, where rioters torched cars and looted stores.LONDON -- The U.K. riots have kicked a hole in the country's box office.Theatrical revenue fell 16% to 2.67 million ($4.3 million) on Monday and 27% to $3.9 million on Tuesday, compared with the same days last week, according to Rentrak. Dozens of movie theaters closed Tuesday evening on the advice of the police. Odeon-UCI, the country's leading chain with 117 sites, closed 24 sites, including its flagship theater in London's Leicester Square and two other sites in Central London. In total 19 Odeon-UCI sites closed in London and surrounding suburbs, as well as other sites in provincial cities, such as Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol. Other chains also closed sites, including Cineworld, which shuttered two sites in South London, and arthouse chain Picturehouse, which shut four theaters in London.Lucy Jones, director of client services, theatrical, U.K. and Ireland, at Rentrak, said that the drop would have also been affected by the improved weather this week, and the differences in films on offer. "Super 8," which opened last Friday, has proved less of an attraction -- taking $3.6 million over the weekend -- than "Captain America: The First Avenger," which opened the previous Friday and took $4.8 million over its first weekend. The pulling power of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" is also diminished in its fourth week in the U.K., compared with the previous week.The streets of London were relatively quiet on Tuesday, after three consecutive nights of rioting, thanks to the presence of an extra 10,000 police officers, but violence broke out in other British cities, including Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham and Bristol, with stores looted and set fire to, vehicles overturned and burned, and three men murdered in Birmingham as they defended their property. More than 1,100 people have been arrested.Prime Minister David Cameron promised that the police would restore order: "This continued violence is simply not acceptable, and it will be stopped. We will not put up with this in our country. We will not allow a culture of fear to exist on our streets." Contact Leo Barraclough at leo.barraclough@variety.com