Wait, no, Chinese cinemas are closed again—Kindly abandon hope

And it was just starting to look like there was light at the end of the tunnel…

It’s well known that the city of Wuhan was the origin point for the coronavirus, the pandemic that is currently sweeping the world and forcing people to hole up in their homes, often foregoing work. That means China was on the front lines of fighting the virus, and things got rough, with hospitals flooded with patients and the city — and by extension the country of 1.4 billion people — locked down pretty tight.

Naturally, this extended to the entertainment industry, with tens of thousands of movie theaters being shut down and movies put on hold, which hurt a lot of distributors, studios and operators. BUT! There were signs that things were on the mend. China had mostly contained the virus, with no new domestic cases showing up. With that in mind, the country had a plan to reopen some 600 theaters, and to rerelease popular movies — Avatar, The Avengers films, etc — to get butts back in seats.

As someone living in the U.S., where theaters are now completely shut down, give or take drive-ins, this was comforting. It showed that an end to this crisis was possible, that even if we had to grit and bear things for a while they would eventually get back to normal.

Only…no. Chinese authorities have once again ordered all cinemas in the country closed, putting the breaks on any plans to reopen, slowly or quickly, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Well, the glimmer of hope was nice while it was there.

No explanation was given for the second shut-down, but insiders suspect it has to do with trying to prevent a second wave of infections. Naturally, industry types are frustrated. “This second closure will not be a one- or two-week issue,” said one executive at a major exhibition company who asked not to be named, China not being famous for tolerating criticism of government decisions. “They are going to be even more cautious when they attempt to reopen again — and this will set us back a long time.”

Even more frustrating, the government isn’t allowing some distributors to make money during this period by selling their unreleased movies to streaming services, the idea being that those movies will be needed to prop up the theater industry when the crisis really does pass. “We’re not allowed to go online with our films and we can’t go to cinemas because they are again closed, so it’s like there is no exit,” said an executive at one of the country’s top distribution companies. “They have to present a new policy and let us release some of our movies online, otherwise many of our film companies are going to go out of business.”

So yeah, things are bad and they don’t look like they’re going to get better anytime soon. Meanwhile, other places that hadn’t yet closed all their cinemas are starting to, like Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea, per Deadline. In the U.S., the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has altered the normal rules for eligibility in the Golden Globe awards to account for movies that have had their release dates pulled or pushed back on account of the crisis. And of course, production on movies and TV shows is at a standstill.

Hopefully we’ll have some better news soon. We’ll take anything.

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h/t The A.V. Club