Business & Tech

Regal Cinemas Closing All Movie Theaters, Including 44 In NY

Regal Cinemas is closing all 44 theaters in New York indefinitely, according to parent company Cineworld.

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The Deer Park Regal Cinemas movie theater is one of 44 in New York that will close, parent company Cineworld announced.
The Deer Park Regal Cinemas movie theater is one of 44 in New York that will close, parent company Cineworld announced. (Google Maps screenshot)

NEW YORK — Regal Cinemas will close all 543 of its theaters in the United States Thursday due to continued revenue losses from the coronavirus pandemic. The chain has 44 New York locations.

On Monday morning, Cineworld confirmed it will suspend operations in the United States and United Kingdom starting Thursday, Oct. 8. No reopening date was set.

Prolonged closures and the reluctance of motion picture companies to release new films in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic drove the move, according to Cineworld, which operates Regal Cinemas.

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"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," Cineworld CEO Mooky Greidinger said in a statement to investors.

Theaters are among the many businesses hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. They were closed March 16 by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and were not allowed to reopen under phase four of the state's reopening plan as many had thought they would be.

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These are the 44 Regal Cinemas in New York:

"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," Greidinger said.

The company reported 45,000 employees will be affected by the suspension of operations.

Regal is the second-largest theater chain in the U.S. after AMC.

Its decision comes on the heels of MGM's announcement Friday it is delaying the release of its newest James Bond film, "No Time To Die," from November until April 2, 2021.

Coronavirus has also pushed back the release of dozens of movies, including expected blockbusters like "Black Widow," which was originally set for release May 1 (now tentatively expected in theaters May 7, 2021), "Wonder Woman 1984" (moved from a June 1 release to Christmas Day) and "The Batman" (moved from June 2021 to October 2021).

Running a theater without new releases was "like a grocery shop that doesn't have vegetables, fruit, meat," Greidinger told the Wall Street Journal. "We cannot operate for a long time without a product."

— By Elizabeth Janney and Shannon Antinori, with additional reporting by Michael Woyton.

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