Regal Cinemas are temporarily closing. Here are the South Florida locations affected
Blame James Bond.
Regal Cinemas, the second-largest theater chain in the U.S., is shuttering all its locations on Thursday, Oct. 8, to wait out the COVID pandemic.
The British-based Cineworld, Regal’s parent company, announced on Monday it would temporarily close all of its 536 locations in 42 states and 120 U.K. cinemas due to the lack of new blockbusters to draw audiences.
In Miami-Dade, that means the South Beach, Kendall Village, The Falls and Southland Mall locations will close. In Broward, Regal owns the Westfork, Cypress Creek Station, Sawgrass, Oakwood, Plantation and Magnolia Place multiplexes.
The announcement comes after last week’s news that “No Time To Die,” which marks actor Daniel Craig’s final outing as super-spy 007, has been delayed from its planned Nov. 20 release date to April 2, 2021.
The movie was originally scheduled to hit theaters in April 2020 but was postponed to November after the initial coronavirus outbreak.
Practically every big blockbuster scheduled for release this year — including Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” the new “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” the ninth installment in the “Fast and Furious” franchise, the giant-monster showdown “Godzilla vs Kong,” “A Quiet Place II” and the Marvel Studios entry “Black Widow” — vacated their original release dates and rescheduled for 2021.
Other big titles, such as Disney’s “Mulan” live-action remake, Tom Hanks’ World War II naval drama “Greyhound” and director Robert Zemeckis’ adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “The Witches,” opted to skip theaters altogether and launched on streaming sites.
Even the Academy Awards, which are traditionally handed out in February, won’t be held until April 25 next year, in part to allow more time for films to be released.
Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated “Tenet,” a combination of spy thriller and mind-bending time travel, was pushed from its original July release date to Sept. 3. But despite Nolan’s brand-name drawing power, the movie has only grossed a disappointing $45 million in 2,930 theaters in the U.S.
The film has fared much better in foreign markets, with $262 million in grosses. But the costly production will end up losing money for distributor Warner Bros. and is the first outright U.S. flop in Nolan’s career.
The ‘Dune’ situation
After being dark all summer, movie theaters started to gradually reopen around the country on Aug. 20 with safety precautions in place (distanced seating, required masks, no concession stands). But there were few takers. And the two largest movie markets in the U.S., New York and Los Angeles, still remain closed.
On Monday, Warner Bros. announced it was delaying its much-anticipated “Dune” adaptation nearly a full year, from its original release date of Dec. 18 to Oct. 21, 2021.
The only major movies still scheduled for theatrical release this year are Pixar’s “Soul” (Nov. 20), the Eddie Murphy sequel “Coming 2 America” (Dec. 18) and “Wonder Woman 1984” (Dec. 25).
But the temporary closure of Regal Cinemas, which cuts into the number of screens where distributors can book their films, suggests those titles, too, might be delayed to 2021.
“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 Mooky Greidinger, CEO of Cineworld, in a press release. “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 employs nearly 33,000 people around the world.
This story was originally published October 5, 2020 at 10:05 AM.
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