Cinema (AP Photo / Alastair Grant)

  • For the reopening of the cinemas, 'Mank', the favorite film at the Oscars, is released

  • Cinema exhibitors.

    Anec: 100 new films with reopening ready, but 9 out of 10 theaters remain closed

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April 25, 2021 There will be about 120 Italian cinemas out of 1,400 that tomorrow will wake up from the lethargy in which they have fallen, by decree, since October. The numbers, equal to 15 percent of the structures in the yellow area (in the orange and red ones, the screens will remain off) he delivers them to Agi Simone Gialdini, general manager of Anec (national association of cinema exhibitors) who, considering the general picture, he does not consider them insignificant: "The conditions for reopening are unsustainable" he explains, listing the curfew at 10pm which imposes the last show at 7.30pm, the ban on selling popcorn and similar and, above all, the fact that, with the reopening announced only about ten days ago, "there aren't many films to bring to theaters, the release schedule takes about four / five weeks". 



"In this moment, those who reopen do so with the spirit of service to culture and to contribute to the return to normality", explains Gialdini. Multiplexes and systems specialized in commercial cinema will take more time, waiting for blockbusters such as 'Cruella' the Disney film with Emma Stone in the role of a Cruella De Mon in punk version (released on May 28) with the UCI Cinemas circuit than with the slogan "The emotion of cinema will return very soon" has just announced a reopening of its facilities starting from mid-May.     



To reopen tomorrow, in what Gialdini defines "the symbolic day", will be, he informs, above all the cinemas that focus on quality cinema. Fifteen structures will restart in Rome ("40 per cent of the screens"), from the Quattro Fontane to the Lux, from the Odeon to Caravaggio to Giulio Cesare. The decree provides that only half of the seats can be occupied, with a maximum of 500 people in the largest rooms, with a mask mandatory for everyone even during the screening. But will the spectators gladly and lightly return indoors to the halls? "After the first lockdown, the public was not worried, cinemas are safe places. And unlike the first reopening, now there is the vaccine". 



The menu of films offered to the public who returns to the cinema after months of abstinence and platforms, as he explains to Agi Gialdini, will offer first fruits from the Oscars and, together, Italian films that have been in the cinema a few days before the closing in October, such as 'I predatori' by Pietro Castellitto and titles that inevitably landed directly on the platforms that are now attempting the road to cinemas.



Like, always tomorrow, 'Mank' on the life of screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, writer of 1941 'Quarto Potere' by Orson Welles, 'What will be' the film by Francesco Bruni with Kim Rossi Stuart presented at the Rome Film Festival and 'Lei mi still speaks' of Pupi Avati, designed for cinema but diverted to Sky. The films already released that will be awarded at the next David di Donatello on 11 May will also return to theaters for a double tour.



Since the first lockdown in March 2020, Italian cinemas have lost a total of 97 percent of turnover and 110 million spectators, for a total of 700 million euros which, with the food and beverage industry, would have reached one billion euros. , always explains the general manager Anec. In the last six months, since the end of October which destroyed the Christmas proceeds, the lost turnover is equal to 450 million euros.