Hi °C | Lo °C THE curtain could be about to come down on Dublin's oldest cinema, the Savoy on O'Connell Street.
The future of the cinema, which is owned by the Ward Anderson family's Dublin Cinema Group Ltd, is under review, along with art-house favourite the Screen Cinema on D'Olier Street.
The two cinemas between them employ 55 people and at their peak in the Seventies had two million patrons a year. Since 2001, however, numbers attending the 82-year-old Savoy have plummeted from 740,000 to 250,000, while cinemagoers to the Screen have fallen from 200,000 to 60,000.
Falls are likely to accelerate as new cinemas open up, including the Odeon Cinema at the Point Village, the Lighthouse in Smithfield, and a planned new venue in the St Stephen's Green shopping centre by the Anderson family.
The two cinemas have also been hampered by a row with Entertainment Film Distributors, which has refused to allow over 100 feature films to be shown in them, including The Artist, Sex and the City and The Inbetweeners.
