AMC Theaters Declares July Reopening Plan
By George Robbins
Ever since the middle of March, theaters have had nothing but fun trying to figure out how to keep themselves afloat amidst closings. Without any open theaters, companies have had no way to bring in their income. This has resulted in massive losses for companies, but none perhaps have suffered as much as AMC. They are the largest of all of the movie theater company chains, but this definitely doesn’t work in their favor right now. They just made the reported announcement that they lost a total of $2.2 billion just over the past few months.
AMC theaters had not announced until recently when they would actually open up their doors to the public. The guess thus far was that they would reopen their doors when other theaters would in July. This was just confirmed by them to be true and they will actually open their doors back up to the public in July. They will have it tough moving forward due to the fact that they have a number of new health guidelines to follow which means they won’t get a lot of people walking through their doors. Not to mention the fact they have no new movies to show until mid to late July.
Many movie megaplexes have been in danger throughout this crisis, but AMC seems to be suffering especially hard due to previous success. Moving forward, they have to find a way to draw people in, and new movies are the best chance they have. New films are mostly dropping later this year and if the chain can survive by then they might have less movies than their competitors. There was a lot of drama recently between the company and Universal Films involving VOD, or Video On Demand. This resulted in them saying they would no longer show Universal movies.
With no Universal movies to show going later into the year, they might end up losing out on a lot of money. Compounded on top of the money they have already lost these past few months, they could end up losing more than they ever could have imagined this year. They will need every single person they can to walk through their doors and buy a ticket. Between limited capacity, and lack of new content, AMC’s reopening will be the start of a tough battle. From July to the end of the year, they have a lot of work to get done if they want to prevent bankruptcy.
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