All Regal, Cineworld Cinemas to Close on Oct. 8 Movie theaters across the U.S., UK will shut their doors on Thursday, and it's unclear when they will open again.

Regal Cinemas and parent company Cineworld Group are shutting their doors for a second time during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a Sunday tweet, Cineworld confirmed it is "considering the temporary closure of our UK and U.S. cinemas," adding that a final decision "has not yet been reached." However, today it was confirmed the closures will go ahead on Thursday, Oct. 8.

As The Verge reports, the closures affect 536 Regal theaters in the U.S. and 127 Cineworld and Picturehouse cinemas in the UK. Mooky Greidinger, CEO of Cineworld, explained, "This is not a decision we made lightly, and we did everything in our power to support a safe and sustainable reopening in the U.S.– from putting in place robust health and safety measures at our theatres to joining our industry in making a collective commitment to the CinemaSafe protocols to reaching out to state and local officials to educate them on these initiatives. We are especially grateful for and proud of the hard work our employees put in to adapt our theatres to the new protocols and cannot underscore enough how difficult this decision was."

The news comes after the latest James Bond movie No Time to Die was pushed from its already-delayed November release date to April 2021. There is no word on how cinema closures may affect the upcoming launches of Pixar's Soul, scheduled for Nov. 20, or Warner Bros. titles Wonder Woman 1984 and Dune, both set for December.

As to if and when these theaters will open again, there's no clear plan due to the unpredictable nature of the pandemic. For now, "Regal will continue to monitor the situation closely and will communicate any future plans to resume operations at the appropriate time, when key markets have more concrete guidance on their reopening status and, in turn, studios are able to bring their pipeline of major releases back to the big screen."