At the end of 2019, the UK box office was in a good place. Cinemas across the country had sold their second-highest number of tickets since 1970 and revenues had exceeded £1.2 billion (€1.3 billion) for the fifth consecutive year. Then COVID-19 happened.
Six months later, two of the biggest cinema chains in the country — Cineworld and Odeon — have announced they will temporarily close their doors.
Independent cinemas wonder if they’ll be able to ring in the new year.
“We can survive it,” Tyrone Walker-Hebborn, owner of Genesis, an independent cinema in east London, told Euronews.
“We can be rescued at the moment, but another three months and I don’t think we’ll be able to be rescued.”
The challenges are multiple. Tougher coronavirus restrictions have increased costs and reduced cinemas’ seating capacity.
That has been compounded by a lack of confidence among filmgoers and big Hollywood studios postponing the release of key films.
‘Confidence was a big thing’
The UK was hit fast and hard by the pandemic and is now Europe’s most heavily impacted country. As of October 11, more than 42,800 people are known to have lost their lives to COVID-19 across Britain and a further 593,000 have been infected.
Like elsewhere around the world, the government ordered all non-essential shops to close from late March. Restrictions were progressively lifted from mid-May but cinemas were, with pubs, among the last to be allowed to reopen their doors to the public on July 4.
The reopening came with some caveats. Strict health protocols were to be adhered to to ensure customers entered safe environments. That includes making sure social distancing rules are respected and thoroughly cleaning each screen between shows.
Four in ten independent cinemas estimated they wouldn’t be able to enforce social distancing come July 4, according to a survey from the Independent Cinema Office. A majority — 23 percent — thought they wouldn’t be ready until September at the earliest.
They also expected a 50 percent loss in seating capacity and for costs to increase by 20 percent.
Genesis was the only independent cinema in the British capital to reopen at the beginning of July and the going was tough.
“We were probably trading at about 15 percent of what we’d normally trade at,” Walker-Hebborn said. But slowly and surely, the audience started coming back with ticket sales growing by up to 10 percent week on week.
“The confidence was the big thing, people were reassured by what we were doing so it was building up quite nicely and quickly went up to about 30 to 35 percent of our normal trade,” he added.
A box office software ensured seating capacity remained high by creating “virtual bubbles” around people’s bookings, while screening times were shuffled around to avoid people crowding into communal areas at the same time and to give staff extra time to clean.
“That, actually, is having a big impact,” said Walker-Hebborn, because it has led to a reduction in the number of screenings.
