Britain’s biggest cinema chain is considering shutting all its UK and US venues temporarily, after the release of the latest James Bond film was put back to next year.
Cineworld, which owns the Regal cinema and Picturehouse chains, said in a statement on Sunday: “We can confirm we are considering the temporary closure of our UK and US cinemas, but a final decision has not yet been reached. Once a decision has been made we will update all staff and customers as soon as we can.”
The company has 127 cinemas in the UK, including 26 Picturehouse venues, and 536 Regal cinemas in the US. It employed 37,000 people globally before the pandemic, with 5,500 in the UK.
Its cinema in Dublin, its only venue in Ireland, had to close due to tightened Covid-19 restrictions two weeks ago. Cineworld also has 123 cinemas across eastern Europe and Israel, where it hopes to keep venues open as those countries are benefitting from lighter coronavirus restrictions and local movies.
The premiere of the new 007 movie, No Time To Die, has been twice postponed, from April when cinemas were shuttered to 12 November, and now to April 2021, in a big blow to the cinema industry.
The company, the world’s second-biggest cinema operator, wrote to Boris Johnson and the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, this weekend to warn them that the industry has become “unviable”.
Film studios are postponing blockbuster releases because audience numbers have been slow to recover since the Covid-19 outbreak. Other releases that have been pushed into 2021 include Disney’s Black Widow and Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story.
Disney has pushed back all Star Wars and Avatar film releases scheduled between 2021 and 2027 by one year, which means there will be no Avatar 2 next year and no new Star Wars movie in 2022.
Cineworld’s theatres reopened in July following the coronavirus lockdown, but it flagged up doubts over its ability to survive a second lockdown in September when it reported a £1.3bn loss for the first half of the year.
It said then that admissions had been growing since it reopened 561 out of 778 sites worldwide, thanks in part to local films and the release of Christopher Nolan’s spy movie Tenet. But it warned that its financial future could be in doubt and that it would need to raise more money if authorities introduced further restrictions to combat the next wave of the virus.
Tenet has taken $280m at the box office internationally but only $41m in the US, where cinemas in the three main markets – New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco – remain closed.
The front page of tomorrow’s Times is announcing that Cineworld is planning to close all of its cinemas across the country as soon as this week putting all of our jobs at immediate risk. There has been no consultation with staff whatsoever. pic.twitter.com/16fKxGcNnG
— Cineworld Action Group (@cineactiongroup) October 3, 2020
The Cineworld Action Group, which represents employees around the world, said staff had not been consulted about the company’s plans. It is understood that news of the potential closures, which was first reported by the Sunday Times, leaked out before staff could be informed.
The Labour party warned that closures would have a damaging impact across the UK, and criticised the government for not providing more support to the cinema sector.
“This is devastating news for Cineworld workers and cinema-goers, and will have a knock-on impact on towns and city centres,” said Jo Stevens MP, the shadow culture secretary.
“The cinema industry was viable before the crisis and will be afterwards, when the film industry recovers. The failure of ministers to recognise the value of shut-down businesses, which now includes many cinemas, means they are consigning thousands of workers to the scrap heap.”
