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Odeon has just announced that two of its London cinemas will be closing.
The chain’s Odeon Covent Garden and Surrey Quays cinemas will be putting up the shutters for the final time on August 11 and 18 respectively.
‘Odeon confirms it will be closing its Covent Garden and Surrey Quays cinemas, due to redevelopment plans taking place at both sites by the respective landlords,’ said the cinema chain in a statement.
Originally opened as the Saville theatre, the four-screen Odeon Covent Garden was converted into a cinema in 1970 and became an Odeon in 2000.
As reported by Time Out, the venue is currently subject to contentious plans to create a basement theatre and hotel within the building. The famous exterior frieze would be preserved, with a six-storey extension added to the ’30s building, according to architect SPPARC’s plans.
Odeon Surrey Quays, meanwhile, is a casualty of the Canada Water regeneration project. It will turn Surrey Quays Leisure Park into a Tesco Extra and 384 new homes.
The cinema chain says that it plans to relocate staff from the two sites to other cinemas. Odeon currently operates more than a hundred cinemas across the UK.
‘Supporting our local cinema teams is our number one priority,’ said Odeon in the statement. ‘We will be looking to secure jobs for as many of them as possible in one of our other local cinema locations. We would like to apologise to our guests for any inconvenience this will cause.’
With two other London cinemas, Bromley Picturehouse and Fulham Road Picturehouse, closing this month, it looks like part of a bleak pattern for the city’s cinemas – albeit with ‘Inside Out 2’ and ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ both delivering recent mega-hits at the UK box office.
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