New sur­vey sug­gests UK cin­e­mas won’t reopen until September

Everyone’s just about passed the two-month mark of the extreme new sta­tus quo under our pan­dem­ic-strick­en real­i­ty, and peo­ple want some­thing to look for­ward to. For cinephiles, the promise of wide­spread the­atri­cal re-open­ings shines as the bright­est light on the hori­zon, but that day may not be com­ing into clos­er view any time soon.

Today brings a new report from the Inde­pen­dent Cin­e­ma Office, which does not con­fer the most encour­ag­ing impres­sion of the time­line for get­ting bod­ies back in brick-and-mor­tar movie hous­es. The ICO polled 497 cin­e­ma oper­a­tors in var­i­ous posi­tions through­out the UK, and the respons­es place the hope­ful return far past the government’s pro­ject­ed date of July. (Christo­pher Nolan shouldn’t be count­ing any chickens.)

A major­i­ty of par­tic­i­pants pre­dict that they would not be able to secure­ly open their doors again until Sep­tem­ber at the ear­li­est, and even beyond that, a size­able 41 per cent state that they will not be able to resume oper­a­tions in any capac­i­ty what­so­ev­er until social dis­tanc­ing poli­cies have been retired.

The 59 per cent that would con­sid­er get­ting back to work would almost uni­lat­er­al­ly install hand-sani­tis­ing sta­tions while requir­ing masks and gloves for staff. (Mea­sures like tem­per­a­ture screen­ing and divider screens between seats in audi­to­ri­ums would be far rarer.)

The report fore­tells finan­cial strain on both ends for the­atres, between the mon­ey required to imple­ment these new pro­to­cols (an esti­mat­ed 20 per cent increase in costs) and the mon­ey they’re los­ing with dimin­ished atten­dance (an esti­mat­ed 50 per cent decrease in gross rev­enue). Most dispir­it­ing of all, a major­i­ty of respon­dents gave them­selves three months of of sur­vival under social dis­tanc­ing rules before they’d have to shut down again.

A lit­tle hope would be nice right now, but as dif­fi­cult as this sober­ing truth may be to accept, begin­ning the process of com­ing to terms with that now may ulti­mate­ly soft­en the blow. It’s going to be a long time until we can nes­tle our buns into the wel­com­ing cush­ion of a the­atre seat, and even longer until we can do so while breath­ing eas­i­ly. Stay safe and stay well.

Read the full ICO report here.