AMC Losses Reportedly At $2.2 Billion During Closures
By George Robbins
The coronavirus pandemic being announced immediately resulted in the shutdown of numerous businesses that had a lot of foot traffic. Movie theaters were obviously a huge danger in the wake of the virus due to the close proximity most people would have with one another. This is why many shut down before the announcement was even made to help stop the spread of the virus. AMC theaters are a massive part of the theater economy due to the sheer number of theaters they have worldwide. It has been on people’s mind just how much they could possibly be losing due to the closings with AMC previously stating it is a lot.
While the amount was never addressed before now, AMC has made statements about how much trouble they were in financially due to being closed. Hope has shined down on them in at least some small form recently due to the fact most states are allowing theaters to reopen. This doesn’t change the fact that they have already had a massive loss hit them by not being opened for the past three months. It was just reported that those losses ended up amounting to somewhere in the vicinity of $2.2 billion. So within the past three months, they managed to lose that much money from simply being closed.
While theaters are going to be opening back up again soon, they have a long and arduous road ahead of them due to studios not having anything for them. Most movies will not be released until later in the year plus there is the issue that many people don’t want to take the risk going out to a public place. There is the hope that people will want to go out to the movies just to leave the house even if older movies are all they have to show anyone. On top of the lack of new content to present to audiences, they are going to have their hands full due to the new health guidelines they must follow to stay open. This all adds up to theaters potentially losing even more in the coming months.
While there is the strong possibility that theaters will be slightly better off in the months coming up, they could still lose more than they gain. Keeping theaters staffed and maintained isn’t cheap and it means that theaters need to try and fill their currently limited capacity. The next month or so will be telling for whether theaters will end up having a leg to stand on. What makes the biggest difference right now is how theaters like AMC will handle their reopenings and try to mitigate losses that they will suffer moving forward. Hopefully that $2.2 billion will not double over the next few months, but like everything else right now, that remains to be seen.