By George Robbins
Cinemark theaters has very recently announced that they are finally getting ready to reopen their doors to the public for the first time in three months. The theater chain has plans to reopen as many of their theaters nationwide as possible on June 19th in order to start earning revenue again since theaters are in a lot of financial trouble right now. They have been completely shut down since the middle of March when the pandemic was announced in order to try and stop the rate of newly infected people from climbing. So with this in mind the idea for theaters reopening was that they would have to come up with ways to follow the newest health guidelines to prevent the spread of infection. For some reason though, they will not require people to wear masks.
The theater chain will be having a phased reopening, meaning that they will not be immediately reopening every location at once or at full capacity. First of all, their not opening at full capacity is because they are not allowed to have people be close enough to one another to go against the social distancing rules. Next, they can’t reopen everywhere because theaters are considered high risk businesses and are among the most likely places for the disease to spread. This is why many states will not be allowing them to properly reopen until a later date when they know whether the risk will be too great or not. On top of these things, the theater chain must enforce that their employees wear masks and keep the buildings clean.
So with all of this in mind, how does it make any sense that they would not enforce people having to wear face masks. Simply not making people wear them can drastically increase the amount of infected people even if they are not at full capacity. It is understandable that people are starting to get annoyed by the fact that they have to wear them whenever they go out to any businesses, but it is for a good reason. They even have to enforce the fact that people working for them must still wear the masks anyway and yet customers for some reason don’t have to. They are at this point allowing people to be responsible for whether they want to make others sick or not.
While it has been stated that guests will be encouraged to wear masks for their own safety and the safety of others, it is a fact that a lot of people don’t care and don’t want to wear the masks anymore. This is why health guidelines now pretty much dictate that policy is that people must wear the masks in most public places. If it isn’t an enforced rule, that only increases the danger that everyone else is thrust into. As of now the United States has the most number of cases worldwide and the most number of deaths and it will only continue to get worse instead of better like most people hope for if people keep doing stupid things. They shouldn’t make it an optional thing and should at least try and enforce it for health and safety reasons instead of trying to draw people into the theaters by making a statement like that.
By George Robbins
Ever since the announcement that all sporting events would be cancelled indefinitely following the worldwide announcement of the coronavirus pandemic, people have wanted to know when they would begin again. Back in March many different businesses, including all major professional sports leagues, had to start shutting down and the first one to do so was the NBA. Ever since they closed down all functions, people have been wondering whether they would be returning at all this year to finish the season or if they would forego it entirely. With this idea of how to move forward in mind, the NBA has been working on a strategy to deal with this and finish out the season.
One of the most prolific ideas to come forward within the past couple of weeks has been to use ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex at Disney world as a hub of operations. This idea is one that would see the complex become the hub that would allow the season to keep going so that it wouldn’t ruin the post-season or anything to follow. Due to Disney’s large amount of hotel accommodations and the number of available basketball courts, this just seemed to be the best possible answer to the problem at hand for the league. The biggest question that has actually just been answered was how the season would be formatted should the idea go through and the season can start again.
In order to get the league up and going again, a season format had to be established in order to make sure things can run smoothly moving forward. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s proposed plan will be decided upon by the Board of Governors meeting, but it will likely be implemented due to how smoothly it should be able to be implemented. The plans calls for 22 of the 30 teams to go to Orlando and they will each play eight regular season games. Then, there will be a play-in tournament to determine the last playoff seeds in the Eastern and Western conferences before the playoffs. The start date for these games would be July 31st with the last possible date for Game 7 of the Finals being October 12th.
His plan eliminates the teams that were far out from playoff contention when the season was forced to shut down back in March. It also gives teams that were vying for playoff contention a chance to be able to qualify for the post-season. Teams that were within six games of their conference’s eighth seed are part of the plan. Silver’s plan will allow teams that were already in playoff contention the opportunity to get themselves back on track and allow them to practice before the playoff games start up. Players on the grounds will have to pay very close attention to guidelines if they want to leave the area and must maintain the same social distancing they should have been otherwise. The prevention of the spread of the virus is still a major issue and it is the reason no fans will be in attendance during the games. So it will be interesting to see how this all really ends up happening.
By George Robbins
Movie theaters are in a bit of trouble in regards to their current financial situations due to the fact they aren’t drumming up any business. This has been the biggest issue for these companies since the announcement of the coronavirus pandemic back in the middle of March. They have been closed down ever since while still having to pay money to maintain their screens should they actually be able to open up any time in the near future as planned. As far as many theaters are concerned, they want to reopen their doors to the public by July so they can start earning some sort of revenue again to try and stay open. There are a lot of things that need to be planned for before they can open up their doors again.
Theaters are among those businesses that must take extra care to ensure that people stay healthy by making sure people are distanced from one another even when seated. They must also make sure that the premises stay clean and sanitary for every person who walks through the door. This will be a difficult task considering they get their money by selling seats and they are now going to be forced to limit the amount of seats sold. This will not stop some theaters from opening their doors since Cinemark just became the first theater chain to announce a reopening date. Cinemark has said that they plan on reopening theaters stateside on June 19th. The question is how exactly do they plan on opening with no new movies.
There are a number of theaters that have stated that they wanted a reopening some time before the start of the summer or by the beginning of July. Cinemark is currently the theater chain the will reopen first, but this means they will be the first ones to test the waters. They won’t be able to reopen in every part of the country immediately because some places have theaters listed for later reopenings, but in most places they will be able to open their doors. This is when the true challenge will start to kick in however, because the real issue is just how many people will actually end up going out to the movies at all. With no new movies to show and the risk of potentially getting infected being pretty high in those circumstances, why would anyone want to go to the movies.
AMC theaters recently announced that, due to the shut downs of their over 900 theaters worldwide, they are in a very serious amount of financial trouble that they may not be able to recover from. On top of loss of revenue in the first quarter and zero revenue in the past couple of months, they understand that they won’t really have a leg to stand on even if they do manage to reopen soon. Without any new content to show the public, they don’t have any way to draw people back into their theaters and they know it will be a long time before people will really start going back to them again. On top of this, due to a conflict with Universal, they will not be showing any upcoming Universal films which will only further ruin any chances of revenue. Overall, it is not a good period in time for any theater chains and it could be a time where many end up being bought out by other companies.
By George Robbins
‘Mission: Impossible 7’ is the most recent movie to be worked on as a part of the franchise led by Tom Cruise. The movie was in production in Italy when the pandemic hit and not too long afterward the production of the film was put on hold. It wasn’t the only production to be put on hold as many all over the world soon afterward began shutting down. Since then, many film production crews have stated that they want to get back to work on their films as soon as possible. The people responsible for ‘Mission: Impossible 7’ have stated that they want to get back to work as soon as they can even if they have to change the plot a bit.
A major plot point in the film apparently has something to do with the filming that was being done in Italy. They said that their wanting to restart filming as soon as possible has resulted in them possibly changing up some of the film. This has been speculated to possibly even change the way the future eight film in the franchise will work out as well. There is no telling whether this will truly end up being the case or not until they can properly get back to work filming. This is something of an issue that they have been working on since the pandemic was announced and they may just have an answer now.
Not too long ago now, it was announced that the UK would start relaxing on some of its lockdown rules to start allowing filming again. This means that films being worked on in the UK could continue starting this month but with restrictions in place. These restrictions include things such as crew keeping masks on, less crew being around on set, social distancing rules being in effect, and actors having to change how they interact with one another. These guidelines are the same guidelines that are currently being adapted by Hollywood to allow other films to keep filming. With these in place, many films will be able to resume shortly given that the locations that they are filming in allow for it.
‘Avatar 2’ was that first to set a date to start filming again when the cast and crew complete their mandatory 2 week quarantine. People thought that ‘Mission: Impossible 7’ had restarted production in England already but director Christopher McQuarrie has said they are waiting for the all clear. This might mean that they are not actually going to cut the Italy portion after all and will mean they will get to continue as they intended. However, it seems that the start date for them to restart filming is some time in September and they will be able to film how they wanted. This has resulted in the movie’s release changing from July 2021 to November 2021.
By George Robbins
May was a massive month for companies to move things forward and try and get their business back on track. A lot of different businesses that have been shut down due to the pandemic have been given the green light to start getting back to work to some degree. While a lot of companies are working towards simply getting back up to running speed again, there are some trying to move onward. Among those companies are the ones in the entertainment industry and they have been in a sort of precarious situation since this pandemic began. They haven’t been able to work on any productions or release any of the ones that they have been working on, leaving them with little to do. This is why Video on Demand, or VOD, has become so much more important for these companies than it was before.
VOD has made a lot of headway in the industry as of late due to the fact it is the best form of revenue for some of the bigger companies at the moment. With many people stuck at home with little to do, subscription services are doing very well at the moment. Most recently there was the launch of HBO’s premier service aptly named HBO Max. The new streaming service had its official launch by WarnerMedia on May 27th and is even starting to bolster its library of content. As of now, the service is already boasting a massive amount of content and is planning on massively increasing the amount of content available for the future.
The new streaming service will be adding in a large amount of programming within the next month alone ranging from classic titles to new HBO programming and even new Max Originals. Their already extensive library consists of thousands of hours of content and approximately 2000 films. It is clear they are doing their best to draw as much attention to this service as possible to make sure that they can continue to bring in new revenue. In order to make people interested to begin with, they already listed that they would naturally be putting their entire HBO catalog on the service. This is in addition to all of the new Max dedicated content that will be put up.
Their new content that they will be making available to the public moving forward is what is meant to entice people to subscribe to the service. Within the next few weeks alone, they will be trying to add in the newest titles to their repertoire in order to further increase interest and draw people in. It will be awhile before things in the outside world will be able to run smoothly again, and this is the perfect opportunity for them to launch their service. There is no doubt that they will be able to draw people in and they will certainly have a large number of subscribers due to both currently available content and content that has been announced for the future including things like the Snyder cut of ‘Justice League.’
By George Robbins
This whole pandemic has been nothing but a pain for people and has resulted in a lot of problems springing up, especially when it comes to the economy. On the massive list of businesses that have been forced to close down to help prevent the spread of the virus are places like movie theaters, production studios, and theme parks. Of course, the ones that are most at risk for possibly causing the rate of infection to skyrocket again are the places like the theme parks. Since they are places where there is usually a lot of foot traffic, this all makes sense and it is the biggest issue being faced by these businesses who wish to reopen soon. So the question is whether they will be able to adjust themselves to the newest rules accordingly in order to reopen to the public.
Within the last month or so, many businesses have begun the process of trying to get their businesses ready to reopen. In order to do this they must follow the new health guidelines that are in place and ensure they are implemented properly. Many businesses have reopened, some with a degree of difficulty, but have still managed to be doing alright. There is still the problem that many have run into such as people not following some of the rules which puts people at risk or businesses themselves not following through on the guidelines. This is something that will not fly when it comes to more public businesses since they will see the biggest surge in foot traffic.
Among the places that are in the midst of getting themselves ready for their reopening are amusement parks. These theme parks are doing their best to get their employees back to work and up to speed in order to make sure they are ready for the return of guests to their grounds. Many places are planning on reopening their gates to the public some time within the next month. Some of the larger parks are even doing test runs within the next week with an even more limited capacity than they will have come opening day. There is a lot more going into the reopening of these parks than most other businesses.
Theme parks have a lot currently going on and have much that they have to prepare for. They must ready themselves for an influx of guests even though they will ultimately not be allowing more than a certain amount of them inside the park. On top of this, staff must ensure that people are adhering to the guidelines like keeping masks on and strictly following the social distancing order. Universal Orlando is doing this relatively quickly with a soft reopening scheduled for Friday June 5th and even allowing guests back in early if they are staying at their hotels. While they can reopen now, Universal Studios Hollywood is a bit tougher due to California’s strict guidelines regarding the openings of businesses. They might still be able to reopen in July if things start looking a little better by then.
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