Following the confirmation that Regal Cinemas owner Cineworld will be temporarily closing its theaters across both the U.S. and U.K., fellow British exhibition giant Odeon is making similar moves.
The chain is set to temporarily move to Thursday-Sunday or Friday-Sunday trading across roughly 25 percent of its 120 cinemas in the U.K., The Hollywood Reporter understands. The news was first broken by the magazine Film Stories on Monday and confirmed by several customers on Twitter.
Like Cineworld, who made the decision days after the release of James Bond film No Time to Die was pushed back to April 2021, Odeon cited “ongoing delays to to the release of many new films,” and said it hoped to reopen full time “when the big blockbusters return.”
Cineworld’s decision to close its sites, which sent shockwaves across the industry and is set to impact around 45,000 workers in the U.S. and U.K, prompted immediate fears that other major chains would follow suit, with experts predicting that with no major blockbusters on the horizon, more closures were inevitable.
Neither AMC nor Cinemark in the U.S. could be reached for comment. Both are still in the process of reopening their locations, with markets like New York and Los Angeles still off limits.
