Earlier this week, in the morning of 25 March 2025, Filmgarde Cineplexes announced the closure of its last remaining outlet at Kallang Leisure Park. This marked the end of its run in Singapore’s cinema industry after 18 years.
Established in 2007, Filmgarde Cineplexes have been an option for those living in the years for nearly two decades – with previous cinemas at Bugis+ and Century Square in Tampines. Both these Filmgarde Cineplexes were shuttered in 2022.
Survived The Pandemic, But Not Rising Costs And Trend Of Disappearing Audiences
The pandemic in 2020 drastically impacted the cinema business. In 2020, the number of movie-goers was only a quarter of that in 2019 – falling from about 18.5 million in 2019 to 4.7 million in 2020.
While Filmgrade Cineplexes survived this understandably challenging times, where safe distancing and COVID-19 fears reduced the number of people going out to the movies, it could not beat the inflating cost of business and the rise of online streaming that led to falling attendance rates.
As we can see in the table below, the number of movie-goers were already dropping before the pandemic in 2020. From 2016 to 2019, the number of movie-goers fell 15%. Of course, the pandemic accelerated the crash in 2020 – and it has recovered to less than half of what it used to be in 2016.
Of course, Singapore’s resident population had actually grown more than 5% between 2016 to 2023. So, with more people in Singapore, there were fewer movie-goers.
More Cinema Screens Today Compared To 2016
Another interesting statistic in the table above is that there are more cinema screens today compared to 2016 – even though attendance rates is less than half of what it was.
This means cinemas are not as crowded, which is good for the average movie-goer, but bad for the cinema operator. And, this possibly only leads to one conclusion – there will inevitably be more cinemas shutting down in the near future.
Recent Pain For Cinema Operators
Another logical conclusion we may stretch to make is that only the fittest cinema operators will survive. Singapore’s cinema landscape is dominated by 3 main operators – Shaw Theatres, Golden Village and Cathay Cineplexes.
Following the closure of Filmgarde Cineplexes, Cathay Cineplexes shuttered a cinema outlet in Jem mall, located in Jurong East, on 27 March 2025 – while the landlord was seeking $4.3 million in rental arrears. This also came on the back of recent closures in West Mall, in Bukit Batok, and Ang Mo Kio.
Shaw Theatres closed down its cinema in Seletar Mall in November 2024, while Eng Wah, an operator with 80 years of history in Singapore’s cinema industry, closed its last outlet in October 2024.
All this points to the right-sizing of cinema operations in Singapore. While there’s currently no end in sight for cinemas shutting down, we should get to a point where operations stabilise. Potentially, this will mean that only the biggest and best movies – that attract the most crowds – are played in the cinemas.
As it is, many of us already have streaming services at home to enjoy. This has also shown up in the recent Household Expenditure Survey 2023, where online video streaming subscription spiked. As of 2023, 41.1% of households had an online streaming subscription, compared to only 6.9% in 2017/18.
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