Natomas Regal Movie Theater to Close Indefinitely

The Regal Natomas Marketplace marquee in March 2020. / Photo NatomasBuzz.com

THE NATOMAS BUZZ STAFF
THE NATOMAS BUZZ | @natomasbuzz

The Regal Natomas Marketplace movie theater will close again indefinitely just one week after reopening.

Cineworld, parent company of Regal, today announced it will temporarily suspend operations at all of its 536 Regal theaters in the U.S. effective Thursday due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This official announcement follows on the heels of news reports over the weekend of the pending closures.

The theater in Natomas just reopened to moviegoers on Friday, Oct. 2 after being closed for seven months. The theater was allowed to reopen with limited capacity and other safety measures after Sacramento County moved to a less restrictive tier on the state’s COVID-19 watch list.

It was not known at press time the impact this most recent closure will have on multimillion dollar plans to remodel the Natomas movie theater.

“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. — from putting in place robust health and safety measures at our theatres to joining our industry in making a collective commitment to the CinemaSafe protocols to reaching out to state and local officials to educate them on these initiatives,” 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.”

As theaters in major U.S. markets such as New York remained closed, movie studios have delayed the release of new films. Without these new releases, Cineworld officials said they could not entice moviegoers to return to theaters amid the backdrop of COVID-19.

“…The prolonged closures have had a detrimental impact on the release slate for the rest of the year, and, in turn, our ability to supply our customers with the lineup of blockbusters they’ve come to expect from us,” Greidinger added. “As such, it is simply impossible to continue operations in our primary markets.”

Regal, a subsidiary of the Cineworld Group, operates one of the largest theatre circuits in the U.S., consisting of 7,076 screens in 536 theatres in 42 states along with the District of Columbia and Guam as of Sept. 30.

The theater closures will impact approximately 40,000 employees across the U.S.