Cinema screens go dark as blown fuse blacks out Batman

8:00am Friday 25th July 2008

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FILM-lovers sipping soft drinks and popping popcorn in their mouths were forced to leave a cinema in Worcester city centre after it was plunged into darkness.

On one of the busiest nights for the Odeon in recent weeks a fuse blew, cutting the power and blacking out all seven screens at the Foregate Street venue at about 7.30pm.

That meant it really was a dark night for movie buffs wanting to watch one of the first showings of new Batman film The Dark Knight on Wednesday.

Odeon manager Will Poole said: “We had a press show and we lost two other showings of Mamma Mia! We had 400 paying guests who had already bought their tickets.

“We had 200 people turn up for the press show as well, which was a shame.

“We gave all of the people a free ticket to come back again any time, which is all we can do really.

“I would just like to apologise, but it was not our fault.”

Mr Poole said a specialist electrician was called in to fix the problem yesterday.

He said: “It was our master switch. This is quite an old cinema and we have got three fuses inside the big switch. When the fuse blew we had to drive down to Tewkesbury to get an old-fashioned fuse.

“We put that one in but it blew the next one along.”

Mr Poole said the cinema was back up and running again at about 4pm yesterday. However, he said the blackout had caused a lot of trouble and cost the cinema a lot of money.

He said: “It took everything out. We had the police come down here because it set the panic alarms off.

“It was probably going to be the busiest day we were going to have for about three weeks so that cost us thousands of pounds in just one night.”