Gintaras Plytnikas, head of Forum Cinemas in Lithuania, says it takes time for cinemas to reopen for several reasons.
"We are not that fast as we need to do many things before reopening, starting from freshening up in the house, reopen the halls and turn equipment on and make sure everything works. Moreover, we do not take movies from the internet after all and we need to contact distributors and see what's left and what rights cinemas can be given," Plytnikas told BNS.
Forum Cinemas started selling tickets last Friday and the first screenings are scheduled for April 30.
Meanwhile, the Multikino cinema, situated at the Vilnius-based Ozas shopping mall, is not rushing into reopening. Its marketing director Raimundas Bilinskas says the decision to reopen has been made already but no specific date has been set, therefore, the sale of tickets has not been started yet.
"We don’t have a specific date yet. We hope to get in time to reopen with all cinemas on April 30 but we still have many organizational issues related to IT. It might be so that we will be a bit late to that reopening," he told BNS.
In his words, the government's decision to restrict the number of people in one cinema hall and the ban to sell drinks and snacks is rather painful.
Under the government decision, no more than 150 people can be in a cinema hall and they cannot fill more than 30 percent of the seats.