Hours after municipal authorities in Shanghai gave more than 200 cinemas the green light to re-open Saturday, national-level Chinese authorities on Friday ordered all theaters throughout the country shut again, likely due to concerns over renewed coronavirus threat.
Around 500 theaters across the country had attempted to re-open, but seen little financial benefit from doing so, with screenings averaging less than a person a day and a national daily box office intake in the low thousands of dollars.
They had only re-opened their doors after receiving direct authorization from their local government bodies, who verified that they were following mandated health procedures.
But now, China’s national film bureau has ordered them all shut again, without saying exactly why or when they might hope to re-open.
The contradicting orders from different levels of government recall an incident in late February where the municipal authorities said that it would ease quarantine restrictions on the 11 million people locked down in the disease’s epicenter of Wuhan city, allowing those healthy to leave the city, only to cancel the edit hours later, saying it had been an “invalid” decision made without higher authorization.
More to come.