Hong Kong should relax the licensing renewal criteria for cinemas to allow them to host live performances or sports broadcasts, a lawmaker has said, as the city continues to grapple with a slew of theatre closures.
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Kenneth Fok Kai-kong, who represents sports, performing arts, culture and publication in the legislature, made the suggestion on Thursday after the Golden Harvest cinema at MegaBox shopping centre in Kowloon Bay announced it would be closing down at the end of the week.
Fok said that while he believed the rate of closures was slowing down, he feared that residents would gradually stop going to the cinema to watch films, with fewer choices of theatres available to them.
“The government should consider relaxing the licensing requirements to allow cinemas to operate different types of businesses,” he said, citing live performances and live sports broadcasts as alternative events that would allow more theatres to survive.
Fok added that box office revenues in Hong Kong were largely dependent on American films, with Hollywood blockbusters taking up 70 to 80 per cent of earnings.
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As such, the current downturn in the United States box office was also affecting Hong Kong, he explained. US domestic ticket sales amounted to US$8.7 billion in 2024, down 3.3 per cent from US$9.04 billion the year before.
According to the Hong Kong Theatre Association, only 51 cinemas were left operating in the city as of May, a sharp drop from the 112 venues in 1994.