A computer virus crippled operations at the Spring Lane Cinemas movie theater in Sanford on Friday night, but operations resumed the next day and have been ongoing as usual, according to one of the theater’s managers.
“We had a computer virus on Friday night that was so bad it infected everything, even our projectors and the program for scheduling movies,” said Jared Campbell, a manager at the 10-screen multiplex in Sanford.
Campbell said movie-goers had to be turned away on Friday, and that while IT workers are still dealing with the virus, everything resumed as normal the next day.
“All of our computers are connected to all of the computers in the whole company, so we had to shut ours off so the virus wouldn’t spread anymore,” he explained. “And that led to some issues with our movie times being published. If the movies aren’t scheduled in the system by Tuesday, Google won’t publish them online. Right now everything is scheduled and ready to go. We’re still working on the virus.”
We received a number of messages over the weekend asking if Sanford’s only working movie theater had shut down for good, perhaps because of the ongoing bankruptcy proceeding by parent company Frank Theaters, which also owns the Sandhills Cinema in neighboring Moore County and several other theaters across the country. Thankfully that’s not the case.
“We’re definitely not closed,” Campbell said.
