Crouch End Picturehouse shuts ‘temporarily’ amid nationwide closures from Covid-19 slowdown

Crouch End Picturehouse “temporarily” closed today but it remains unclear when the cinema will reopen with jobs at risk.

Cineworld, which owns the national Picturehouse chain, announced it was temporarily shutting 127 cinemas from October 9 - including in Crouch End - after the James Bond film No Time To Die was pushed back to April 2021.

In the UK it is understood 5,500 jobs are now at risk.

The decision comes amid a significant fall in revenue for the cinema industry from the coronavirus pandemic.

Crouch End councillor Dawn Barnes (Liberal Democrat) said it was “always worrying” when jobs were at risk in the area’s “rich cultural scene”.

Cllr Barnes said that while Crouch End’s finances had been hard-hit by Covid-19 she believed the long-term future of the area’s arts and culture sector remained “strong”.

In a statment published on its website, Picturehouse said there was “no set date” for reopening but that it would “monitor the situation closely”.

The cinema chain said it “was devastated” to shut and that it “could not reiterate how difficult the decision was”.

Do you work at Crouch End Picturehouse? Get in touch with the Ham&High news desk via michael.boniface@archant.co.uk or 07805 403 545