Back on the big screen – Mallard Cinema opens Saturday
SOCIAL distancing measures will be in place at the Mallard Cinema when it reopens on Saturday after being closed for two months during the early phases of lockdown.
This will mean that the four screens’ usual capacity of 333 will be down to about one third.
Bookings were due to reopen yesterday[Wed 27th], and manager Daniel Phillips said that the line-up of films is much the same as it was before lockdown, due to the lack of new releases in recent months.
Many recent movies have been made available on pay-per-view platforms, but one of these – Trolls: World Tour – has not been screened at cinemas. ‘Whilst it has been released to purchase online for Sky customers, it hasn’t been released anywhere else, and we’ve been told we will be one of the first cinemas in the world to show it, as we are opening before most others,’ said Mr Phillips.
Tickets for the screenings next week will be available at a special ‘welcome back’ price of £2.50 each.
As well as spacing customers out in the seats, one round of screenings per day will be dropped to allow more cleaning time between showings.
Mr Phillips said protective screens are being installed at the shop tills and there will be free-standing hand sanitisers throughout the building.
Staff will manage the volume of customers as they move through the foyer and the building to their screens.
The cinema employs six staff, including Mr Phillips, and he said that all have been retained, thanks to both the director of the Mallard Complex and the States’ payroll co-funding scheme.
‘Without that, it would have been extremely difficult to have survived over two months entirely intact without any form of income at all,’ he said.
