Cinema has been shut down around the world due to the outbreak of the coronavirus, with some establishments unable to reopen, so badly have they suffered from the pandemic crisis.

The big cinema chains have not escaped unscathed either, with Cineworld, which owns Cinema City, among other things, running up a massive debt of more than $4800M, which it cannot repay and is reportedly filing for bankruptcy.

The Wall Street Journal published the worrying news, citing sources close to Cineworld and the case. Bankruptcy is not the same as shutting the door on a company or business; instead, a debtor with unpayable debts seeks a moratorium on payments to pay off the debt. So, even so, Cineworld can continue to operate under Anglo-Saxon law, but the fact is that the debt of more than USD 4.8 billion is a gross amount, which is why it is in trouble. According to the report, this massive amount of money is primarily due to the shutdowns caused by the Crown virus epidemic.

The British newspaper The Guardian reported that Cineworld had been in talks with shareholders this week over a financial bailout. At the time, the cinema chain said it was due to a shortage of summer blockbusters, which had resulted in lower than expected attendances at its cinemas. As a result, the company’s market value exceeded the stock market on Wednesday. Cineworld says that for the time being, this is not expected to affect their business, and they are trying to maintain financial stability.

The Guardian reports that it’s not just the pandemic and the lack of summer blockbusters that are the problem, but also the fact that the cinema chain has taken a bite out of the Canadian Cineplex acquisition: since it backtracked in 2020, the Canadian company has sued Cineworld. That was, or is, almost $1000M in damages because the case is still pending. Cineworld closed 2020 with a loss of $3,000M and 2021 with a loss of $708M, although last year its revenues doubled, from $852M to $1,800M, with No Time to Die and Spider-Man: No Journey Home. Cineworld’s cinemas had 54M admissions in 2020 and 95M in 2021. An upward trend, but also a staggeringly low number compared to last year when a total of 275 million people bought tickets at Cineworld screens before the epidemic.

Cineworld was founded in 1995, is based in London and has almost 10,000 screens in Hungary, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Israel, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Romania and the United States. In addition, to the UK and the United States. Its leading brands are Cineworld, Picturehouse, Cinema City, Yes Planet and Regal Cinemas. So it’s really only beaten in size by AMC Theaters. AMC is doing well, thank you very much: according to The Guardian, Top Gun: Maverick and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness have doubled their ticket sales in the US because of record high monthly attendance in July, a figure only seen before the pandemic.

Source: The Guardian