Regal Cinemas’ Parent Company Cineworld Opening Theaters by July 10th
By George Robbins
Ever since the beginning of the pandemic, one of the biggest questions on people’s minds was just when businesses that had to close would reopen again. Most of the ones that shut down were public businesses that saw a lot of foot traffic, as well as other businesses that were considered non-essential to daily living. Among those non-essential, high-risk businesses that were shut down were movie theaters which have suffered greatly over the past few months. Theaters were already seeing a decline in sold tickets before the pandemic was announced in mid-March, but it is far worse than that. They had to lay off or furlough many of their employees and keep their doors shut, but now it seems they will all be opened soon with the second largest chain, Cineworld announcing their reopenings.
Theaters have been in nothing but financial trouble ever since the start of the pandemic. They have had to keep their theaters in working order while there was no one in them while not being able to take in any new income. Within the past month or so, businesses have been getting the green light to reopen their doors to the public and eventually theaters were given the go-ahead as well. One of the first big theater chains to make an announcement as to just when they planned on opening their doors was Cinemark. They are one of the biggest chains and they had their sights set on reopening as many locations as possible by June 19th.
Not too long after the announcement that Cinemark would be opening their doors to the public again, AMC made their announcement of their plans. The plan that they came up with was to open their locations back up by some time in July. It seems Cineworld followed in AMC’s footsteps because they plan on trying to get all of their locations opened in the U.S. and the UK by the time July 10th rolls around. They are the second largest chain worldwide after AMC and they are doing what they can to get everything back to working order again. For those unaware, they are also the parent company of Regal Cinemas, one of the most prominent theaters.
Regardless of when they open, they all have a hard time ahead of them because they have new guidelines to follow and no new movies to show. Included in the new guidelines is a clause about how there must now be a limit on capacity to enforce social distancing, which makes selling tickets to enough people to make a profit an issue. The lack of new movies to show is also an issue since that is the main selling point for theaters, to present the public with new films to watch. Most movies have been pushed to late this year and only a couple will release by the end of July. With all of this going on, it might not matter if they reopen at all, but all that can be done now is to wait and see.