Hong Kong movie theaters are shutting down again. The news follows the announcement that Hong Kong Disneyland will also be closing down again, for at least 7 days. Hong Kong has identified a new surge of cases, which has prompted them to go on lockdown again as a precautionary measure. The area was one of the first places in the world to shut down schools and businesses, leading to a pretty good handle on things when they hit May and started to reopen. It is unclear how long movie theaters will be closed this time around.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced that movie theaters, along with other non-essential businesses will once again have to shut their doors, due to 52 new cases. It is believed that at least 11 of the cases were imported, while 21 are from local clusters. It’s unclear where the remainder came from, but Hong Kong healthcare officials are doing their best to track and trace them. It is not believed that any of the cases originated from the reopening of Hong Kong Disneyland last month.
As with the first set of cases earlier this year, Hong Kong believes these new imported cases went undetected. For the time being, they will be closely monitoring the situation, while asking that citizens hang out in groups of four or less. When reopening guidelines were set, citizens could get together in groups of 50, which has come down drastically since the new case surges. For now, it looks like a lot of places are going to be playing whack-a-mole when it comes to new cases and dealing with them as they pop up.
The Hong Kong premiere of Korean zombie action movie Peninsula was scheduled to happen this Wednesday, but has since been canceled. The movie was expected to be one of the biggest box office success stories of the summer. This just goes to show that we’re far from getting rid of this current pest and that people are going to have to adjust their lifestyles in order to keep this from spreading any further. Movie theaters in North America, for the most part, have been shut down since March and remain closed right now, with no real timeline of opening up again since July was supposed to be the month.
As Hong Kong Disneyland shuts down, Orlando, Florida reopens Walt Disney World. However, there are some key differences here. Hong Kong opened up their park after flattening the curve and were able to do so safely. Florida is still raging with new cases, thousands per day, and still opened up the world-famous theme park, which really seems like a recipe for disaster as more and more cities across the United States reenter lockdown protocols. For now, we’ll just have to keep an eye on Hong Kong and see how they handle this latest surge. Variety was one of the first to report on Hong Kong movie theater closures.
