Cinema chain Empire collapses and will close six venues – is your local at risk?
The Empire Cinemas chain has gone into administration, with six of its locations around the country being closed immediately.
The closures will mean the loss of around 150 jobs – and leave the city of Sunderland and town of Wigan without a main cinema.
Local reports suggest staff found out they had lost their jobs when they arrived at work today to find notices stuck to the doors and windows.
Joint administrators at BDO have said the seven venues currently open will carry on operating while they seek a buyer for the business.
The six sites that have closed for good are:
- Bishop’s Stortford
- Catterick Garrison
- Sunderland
- Swindon
- Walthamstow
- Wigan
Sutton Coldfield’s Empire cinema, which was already shut, will also not reopen.
The seven cinemas that will remain open while a buyer is sought for the business are:
- Birmingham
- Clydebank
- High Wycombe
- Ipswich
- Sutton
The two Tivoli-branded cinemas in Bath and Cheltenham, which are owned by Empire, will also stay open.
People who bought tickets in advance for screenings at the closed locations will be refunded, the company said, while gift cards, ticket e-codes, guest passes and readmission tickets will still be accepted at the remaining sites.
In a note on the Empire website, the company’s chief executive Justin Ribbons said the chain had not recovered from the brutal impact of the Covid pandemic on cinemagoing.
He wrote: ‘As a consequence of Covid-19, where we were mandated by Government to close down our cinema chain in its entirety for protracted periods in 2020 and 2021, this left us with a high fixed cost base and no income.
‘Cinema attendance levels have not yet returned to pre-Covid-19 levels and the operating environment remains extremely challenging.
‘It has been a difficult economic environment for any business to manage through without long-term damage and having exhausted all other available options for the business, we firmly believe that this process can be a platform to restructure the business and preserve as many of our cinemas and the maximum number of jobs as possible.’
Prior to the closures, the company employed 437 staff across England and Scotland.
Stella Creasy, the MP for Walthamstow, wrote on Twitter: ‘Shocked that the
@EmpireCinemas has been closed down with immediate effect – was there on Monday.
‘Please can someone from the administrators urgently provide an update on what next for those who worked there and for the site?’
Empire is not the first cinema chain to face extreme uncertainty after the pandemic.
Last September, Cineworld – which has over 751 sites in 10 countries, including 128 in the UK – filed for bankruptcy in the US.
The company’s value had more than halved over the Covid crisis, and it was facing debts of more than £4 billion.
It failed to find a buyer for its US, UK and Ireland businesses earlier this year but screens remain open ahead of its application for administration, which the BBC reports will take place this month.
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