A CINEMA chain has confirmed plans to temporarily close its sites in Glasgow and across the UK. 

Cineworld bosses say its 127 venues will shut their doors from Thursday with four locations in the city affected. 

Cinemas in Renfield Street, one of the tallest in Europe, the Science Centre, Silverburn, and the Forge will all close for the foreseeable future. 

It is not yet known how many workers will be impacted in Glasgow but as many as 45,000 across the UK face an uncertain future. 

Cineworld chief executive Mooky Greidinger said: “This is not a decision we made lightly, and we did everything in our power to support safe and sustainable reopenings in all of our markets – including meeting, and often exceeding, local health and safety guidelines in our theatres and working constructively with regulators and industry bodies to restore public confidence in our industry.

“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.

"Cineworld will continue to monitor the situation closely and will communicate any future plans to resume operations in these markets 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.”

Despite reopening, Cineworld reported a £1.3bn loss for the first half of the year because of the Covid-19 crisis.

The cinema chain, which is the largest in the UK and second largest in the world behind Chinese firm Wanda Cinemas, posted a pre-tax loss for the six months to June compares with profits of £110m in the previous year.

The chain had reopened 561 out of 778 sites worldwide as lockdown restrictions have been eased.