5,500 jobs at risk as Cineworld confirms temporary closure of UK cinemas

Up to 5,500 jobs are at risk from redundancy following the announced closure of operations by an international cinema brand.

Cinema giant Cineworld has confirmed that it plans to temporarily close its UK and US cinema operations, following media speculation over the weekend.

The firm plans to suspend operations at all of its 536 Regal theatres in the US and its 127 Cineworld and Picturehouse theatres in the UK from this Thursday (October 8).

The news comes after the announcement that the release of the new James Bond film, No Time To Die, has been delayed until April 2021 - having already been postponed twice.

Mooky Greidinger, CEO of Cineworld, commented: “This is not a decision we made lightly, and we did everything in our power to support safe and sustainable reopenings in all of our markets - including meeting, and often exceeding, local health and safety guidelines in our theatres and working constructively with regulators and industry bodies to restore public confidence in our industry.

“We are especially grateful for and proud of the hard work our employees put in to adapt our theatres to the new protocols and cannot underscore enough how difficult this decision was.

“Cineworld will continue to monitor the situation closely and will communicate any future plans to resume operations in these markets at the appropriate time, when key markets have more concrete guidance on their reopening status and, in turn, studios are able to bring their pipeline of major releases back to the big screen.”