Cineworld To Close All 543 Regal Cinemas After No Time To Die delay, says Variety sources

Am reminded of the scene in Naked Gun where the policeman says: “Move on, nothing to see here”

This news is understandable, but sad and unfortunate. All United States Regal Cinemas to close, all cinemas in Ireland and the U.K as well.

UPDATE 10/4/20 @ 10:25am PT: Cineworld posted to their Twitter account to confirm they are “considering” closing but no official decision has been made yet:

We can confirm we are considering the temporary closure of our U.K. and US cinemas, but a final decision has not yet been reached. Once a decision has been made we will update all staff and customers as soon as we can.

— Cineworld Cinemas (@cineworld) October 4, 2020

Variety understands from sources that the chain will close all sites in both countries as early as this week, with staff notified ahead of Monday. Regal is the second largest domestic chain in the U.S., while Cineworld is the U.K.’s biggest cinema operator.

Cineworld to Close U.S., U.K. Cinemas In Response to James Bond Delay – Variety

Fellow Regal Unlimited customers, all we can say is guess we’ll have to wait until they reopen again. They never charged us for the monthly subscription, despite saying they would a month after reopening. Guess they decided it wasn’t worth the hassle (?).

The underlying culprit remains the pandemic, but the more immediate concern is not enough new movie content. No Black Widow, No Time To Die also delayed. Heck, movies like Greenland were bailing on theaters.

Just look at the movies in the above picture being offered. Hocus Pocus, despite the timeliness, is not going to bring moviegoers back in large numbers, Tenet attendance was cratering, The New Mutants and Infidel? Forget about it. The Empire Strikes Back is worth seeing again, but that’s it. I saw they had Akira in 4K (not pictured) and was interested in seeing that. I might have to rush out to the theater tomorrow and catch it while I still can.

2020 at the movie theaters reminds me of this scene in Naked Gun

Guess until further notice we won’t be seeing any more new movies at the theater. Nothing else is open to even allow us to in our area. We just went through this for over 5 months. Hopefully, this time around won’t be as long. The reality is this isn’t totally shocking after Black Widow and No Time To Die bailed.

It’s hard to imagine another movie theater year worse than 2020. Prepare for more movie delays …

Regal Closes All US Theaters, Suspends Billing for Unlimited Pass Customers

This is a sad day for movie theater fans. Finding a movie to play in a theater — any theater — in any United States city? Difficult, perhaps soon to be impossible. AMC and Regal Cinemas have closed all their U.S theaters.

Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter they expect most, if not all, cinemas in the U.S. to follow suit and go dark in the coming days, much as in Europe and parts of Asia. Regal is the first U.S. circuit to make a blanket announcement.

Regal to Close All U.S. Theaters Indefinitely Amid Coronavirus Pandemic | Hollywood Reporter

We’re down in Las Vegas right now and yesterday we caught — literally — the last showing of The Hunt ⭐️⭐️ at 4:30pm at the Boulder Station casino in Las Vegas. We then tried to go down to the Palace Station for the Cinebarre and it was already closed (see sign above).

We received a note from our Regal Unlimited app that they are suspending billing temporarily. We were both wondering if we’d be billed $42 USD for the month when there were no movies we could see, even if we wanted. Turns out that Regal already has planned this out. Good for them. We wish the theaters were still open, but appreciate not being charged for something we are now unable to use.

Unconfirmed as of this writing, but I believe Cinemark theaters in Las Vegas are still open — they are showing movie times as of moments ago — so movies can still be seen in those theaters, but who knows how much longer they’ll hold out.

MGM has closed down their 14 properties on the strip in Vegas, and that alone feels weird. Even during 9/11, which by the way, we were also in Las Vegas, everything stayed open.

How long will these theater closures last? We tried asking questions but even the employees we spoke to were told nothing. Only that they needed to close and there were no answers as to when the theaters would reopen.

Sad, sad days.

Regal Cinebarre Issaquah Closes + January 2020 Viewing Challenge Complete

Regal Cinebarre in Issaquah Washington has closed permanently, bought by Costco

Sad news whenever a cool movie theater closes. Some readers might remember Kara and I talking about our visit to the Regal Cinebarre in Issaquah.

A notice on the front door of the movie theater said: “Unfortunately, our Cinebarre Issaquah location has closed permanently. We want to thank our guests for years of loyalty, and we will cherish all the fun memories we had together throughout our time here.

Costco purchases Regal Cinebarre Issaquah | Issaquah Reporter

Unfortunately, the location was off the beaten path and wasn’t getting enough business to stay afloat. The Regal Cinnebarre at Mount Lake Terrace is still open. That’s another 45 minutes or so away and almost two hour drive from us, but at least we can still visit a Regal Cinebarre “locally.”

We’ll be in Las Vegas again in March and probably visiting the Palace Station Cinebarre. We remain fans of the dinner and a movie concept but, like all businesses, to remain profitable and competitive “just being there” isn’t enough.

January 2020 21+ New Movies Watched Viewing Challenge — SUCCESS

On the streaming front, might as well update our January 2020 Movie Viewing Challenge: 21+ New/Unseen Movies. The complete list of new/unseen movies watched from January 1 – January 31, 2020 is listed below, ranked by rating.

1. 1917 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½
2. A Quiet Place ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½
3. Lady Bird ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
4. Danny Collins ⭐️⭐️⭐️½
5. The Rhythm Section ⭐️⭐️⭐️½
6. Patchwork ⭐️⭐️⭐️½
7. Little Deaths ⭐️⭐️⭐️½
8. Bad Boys For Life ⭐️⭐️⭐️
9. The Last Full Measure ⭐️⭐️⭐️
10. Tammy and the T-Rex ⭐️⭐️⭐️
11. Phil Spector ⭐️⭐️⭐️
12. The Intruder ⭐️⭐️⭐️
13. Easy To Learn, Hard To Master: The Fate of Atari ⭐️⭐️⭐️
14. Like A Boss ⭐️⭐️⭐️
15. I Want To Marry Ryan Banks ⭐️⭐️⭐️
16. Doolittle ⭐️⭐️⭐️
17. Just Mercy ⭐️⭐️½
18. The Marshes ⭐️⭐️½
19. What Men Want ⭐️⭐️½
20. Clownado ⭐️⭐️½
21. Bumblebee ⭐️⭐️½
22. The Fanatic⭐️⭐️
23. First Response ⭐️⭐️
24. The Call Up ⭐️⭐️
25. Always Will ⭐️⭐️
26. The Grudge (2020)⭐️⭐️
27. Gretel and Hansel⭐️½
28. Final Sale ⭐️
29. Underwater ⭐️
30. The Turning ½

Stand out movies in January for me were 1917, A Quiet Place (just took me totally by surprise with how it was done) and Lady Bird.

I’ll be posting about the February 2020 Viewing Challenge separately, but if you want to get started watching themed movies, be thinking Valentine’s Day and romance films and you’ll be right on track.

Goodbye MoviePass, Thank You For The All You Can Watch Movie Concept

Bye bye MoviePass 9/14/2019

The turbulent era of the monthly all you can watch movie plan, MoviePass is closing for business tomorrow due to a lack of funding:

At the very least, MoviePass helped the theater industry wake up to the reality of a new business model for selling its services in a bulk, monthly fashion, and it’s resulted in MoviePass’ dream — of an all-you-can-watch theater subscription service — living on in AMC A-List and other similar options.

My wife and I both have the Regal Unlimited pass. I’m not sure the plan would even exist if not for MoviePass disrupting the industry and showing there are moviegoers like us who actually enjoy paying monthly for all the movies we can watch.

We would have signed up for MoviePass, but kept reading horror stories from members and it seemed to be a little too unwieldy to use. I was immediately interested in Regal’s plan when they made it available. I did look at the AMC A List plan and Cinemark’s plans too. We have more Regal Cinemas in/around our area than the other theater chains, so it was more a matter of who has the most theaters in our local area that made the decision for us.