The second-largest movie theater chain in the United States announced that it would halt all of its operations nationally.
Cineworld, the parent company of Regal Cinemas, will be “temporarily suspending operations” at all of its 536 Regal theaters in the country as of Thursday.
“This is not a decision we made lightly, and we did everything in our power to support a safe and sustainable reopening in the U.S.,” said Cineworld CEO Mooky Greidinger.
The announcement compounds troubles for an already strained industry that has struggled to recover from the coronavirus — in some cities, movie theaters were prevented from opening until as late as September. As a result, several movies that were expected to be box office hits were either delayed or streamed digitally. Universal Studios released Trolls World Tour to rent digitally the same day that it hit box offices, and other studios followed suit: Mulan, Antebellum, and Bill and Ted Face the Music all opted for in-home releases.
In 2019, nine of the top 10 box office hits grossed more than $1 trillion, according to IMDb. The top earner, Avengers: Endgame, grossed nearly $2.8 trillion. To date, the highest-grossing film for 2020 is the Chinese movie The Eight Hundred, at roughly $441 billion.
Cineworld’s announcement followed another delayed movie. MGM and Universal announced Friday that the James Bond movie, No Time to Die, would be delayed until 2021. Other delayed films include Wonder Woman 1984, Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, and a new Ghostbusters film, according to CNET.
“Despite our work, positive feedback from our customers and the fact that there has been no evidence to date linking any COVID cases with cinemas, we have not been given a route to reopen in New York. […] The prolonged closures have had a detrimental impact on the release slate for the rest of the year, and, in turn, our ability to supply our customers with the lineup of blockbusters they’ve come to expect from us. As such, it is simply impossible to continue operations in our primary markets,” Greidinger added.
Cineworld reported that revenues for the first half the year fell roughly 70% compared to the same time in 2019, according to the Wall Street Journal.
