No movie for drive-in cinema - Curfew silences ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’
Published:Thursday | February 11, 2021 | 5:53 AMYasmine Peru/Senior Gleaner Writer
Palace Amusement’s New Kingston Drive-In cinema will have to close its gates, at least until Ash Wednesday, as the new curfew hours announced by the Government are proving to be completely at odds with their schedule.
“The picture scheduled to open this week is over two hours long and there is nothing else at this time,” Melanie Graham, the company’s marketing manager, explained to The Gleaner.
The major disruption stems from the fact the box office opens at 6 p.m. and the movie starts at 6:30 p.m. With a two-hour movie, exclusive of trailers and advertisement, patrons would be leaving the drive-in at 8:30 p.m.. However, the new curfew time is 8 o’clock, two hours earlier that the previous time of 10 p.m..
“Because it is outdoor and the evenings are getting a bit brighter, we cannot start much earlier. However, our other locations, Carib and Sunshine, will remain open and we will adjust the start times,” Graham said.
Judas and the Black Messiah, a movie about the betrayal and assassination of Fred Hampton, chairman of the Black Panther Party, and which stars Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield, will open on Friday at the other Palace Amusement locations.
Graham describes business as “spotty” and noted that the new curfew hours were another hurdle in the minefield in which the company is currently operating . “During the week [business is] not so good, but it picks up on weekends. Product is a part of the problem. Our business is product-driven. We do all the sanitising of the seats and the social distancing and all the required protocols. People kept asking, ‘Why don’t you open a drive-in’, but it has not delivered so far, and the fact is that our standing charges remain the same,” Graham said.
In an interview last October with The Gleaner, Graham pointed out that getting the drive-in cinema in placed had been a costly venture. “We have had to do this with virtually no money. It has been extremely difficult because, as you know, we have been operating now for eight months without any revenue. We have closed two cinemas, [but] the cost of running the two that are still open is not covered by the patronage that we get each day, and so there really was no money.”
But Graham had remained hopeful, especially since the COVID-19-positive numbers in the United States were going down, and that is a good sign for the film industry. “We were anticipating the release of the blockbuster ones that they have been holding on to, and now this is happening here with the [COVID-19] numbers going up. We have suffered greatly. But we can only hope that people will adhere to the protocols,” she shared with The Gleaner.
However, with a new movie set to open on Ash Wednesday, February 17, the Dominica Drive drive-in should be back in business next week. “On Ash Wednesday, we are scheduled to open Tom and Jerry. It is a shorter, animated film and it is family-oriented, and the midterm break is usually good for business. If we cut out intermission and all else, we ought to be able to work within a 8 p.m. curfew environment,” Graham stated.