Single screens in city declare temporary closure

The cinema halls in and around Kolkata are struggling with a series of challenges, especially with no big releases and

scarce footfall

, due to the ongoing

pandemic

. After the Puja and Diwali buzz got over,

several theatre owners

have now decided to keep the halls shut temporarily until there are some new releases.
Sourav Bose of Basusree said, “From Friday, our hall is shut and it will reopen mid-December when there will be big releases. Without big releases, it is difficult to run the business, as audiences are not coming to theatres.”
Prabir Roy of Ashoka Cinema said, “Without a flow or releases we will not open our theatre. We are hopeful there will be big releases during Christmas. Only big releases can attract the audience to the theatres. Till then, we will be shut as the daily cost without any business is huge.”
Meanwhile,

Arijit Dutta of Priya

informed that his theatre will go through a bit of renovations and it will be back in business sometime in December. “There are certain maintenance work to be done. Those can’t be done while the theatre is in operation. We could not fix those things during lockdown and then all of a sudden we were told that theatres were opening and we started operations. Now that there are no big releases and there is barely any footfall, we decided to do the renovation work quickly,” he told us.
However, not all single screens are shutting down.

Navina Cinema

will keep its operations on. Navin Choukhani of the theatre said, “We are keeping our hall open as this year it is a matter of survival and not of making profits. We will bear the loss as cinema is our passion and I am sure the audience will come back to theatres.”
Meanwhile,

EIMPA

has received only one notification of closure. Piya Sengupta said, “The theatres are struggling. There is no big release yet. Some of the theatres run on big commercial films and it is wise to wait till there are big releases.”