The Chinese government had re-opened hundreds of movie theaters in their big metropolitan cities just four days ago, well, clearly, that was a bad idea. Due to the COVID-19 virus slowly creeping back into the Chinese mainland, China’s film bureau demanded that the 500 movie theaters that were re-opened must shut down immediately [Via Variety]. The official reason why is still unknown, but many are speculating that Chinese authorities are aware of a potential second wave of coronavirus cases about to strike China in the next few days.
Ticket sales were fairly low this past week at the Chinese box-office as people were clearly still fearful of the virus. The Zhongying Golden Palm Cinema in Xinjiang provincial capital Urumqi became the first movie theater in China to reopen its doors on March 22nd, but not a single moviegoer showed up to catch a movie that day. That theater’s owner had publicly stated that “we can’t stay closed forever. We can only cooperate with the notices, and test the situation a bit, and see what feedback we get from the public. If there are no new films, it makes no difference if we’re open or not. At the moment, we only have these few films (“Avatar” “Green Book,” “The Avengers”); we have to wait and see if there will be new movies released.”
Paying attention to China and their actions in regards to fighting COVID-19 is essential in understanding where the rest of the world might be headed in these next few months. China was the first country in the world to deal with the virus back in November of 2019, it took them close to four months to contain the virus for businesses and shops to “safely” re-open this past month.
According to China, and we can’t truly rely on the communist reigme’s numbers because they have been known to lie about official data, they have had 55 new cases and a total of 5 deaths in the last 24 hours due to the Coronavirus.
The timing is interesting. The settlement talks will occur nearly a month after the $7 million-per-day ticking fee start tabulating, which puts real pressure on Paramount to get this done.