Reopening on horizon as drive-in films confirmed
Chichester Cinema at New Park is hoping for an earlyautumn reopening But in the meantime, cinema general manager Walter Francisco is delighted to confirm the films which will be screening at the cinema’s drive-in movie collaboration with Chichester Festival Theatre. The drive-in cinema will be in Northgate car park over the August Bank Holiday weekend (August 2831); Walter can now confirm that the films will be: Friday, August 28, 8.30pm Grease; Saturday, August 29, 5.30pm Singin’ In The Rain; 9.30pm, The Rocky Horror Picture Show; and then Sunday, August 30, 10.30am Onwards: 3.30pm Some Like It Hot; and 8pm The Greatest Showman.
Tickets will go on sale from
July 30 at www.cft.org.uk and www.chichestercinema.org
In the meantime, the cinema will be working towards its own reopening.
“We just want to make sure that everything is completely right. We are still talking to the New Park Centre about how the one-way system is going to work. We are going to be doing the one-metreplus rule. Originally with two metres, we would have been looking at about 30 people, but with the one-metre-plus rule, it would be 54… or if they are single people it would be 46-48. And that will allow us to break even. If it had been the two-metre rule, we would be losing a lot of money, but we were still thinking about opening just to get some sort of momentum going.
The one-metre-plus rule was a godsend. It will give us enough to break even.”
As for whether people will be quick to come back: “There are two types. I bump into lots of people in East Street and North Street who keep asking when we are going to come back. They are chomping at the bit but then again these are people who have got the confidence to go out. With our emails, I get replies to our emails from people saying that they won’t be ready to go out until there is a vaccine.
“And then you have got lots of people somewhere in the middle, but I think as we get used to the way things are and as more things open, I think more and more people are going to start to feel safe to come out.” When the time comes, the cinema will meet all the safety requirements: “The fear is that we don’t want to become another Leicester or another Melbourne. We don’t want to be one of those little hubs where the virus starts spreading again.
“As a cinema we have been so lucky that the UK Cinema Association has been keeping us completely up to date with everything that we need to know. When the VAT changes were announced, within minutes they were sending us an email explaining it all to us. We have been well looked after. The government get a lot of criticism but it doesn’t matter who is in power, it was always going to be an incredibly difficult job.
“We have lost a fair bit of money. It has been a big hit, but it has not been lifethreatening. We have built up our reserves over the last few years, and we have got amazing patrons that keep coming to us. And the reserves we have built up have definitely helped. We will be fine when it comes to it. We will definitely be in good enough shape to keep going.”