Chris Nolan Saving Movie Theaters

AMC's quarterly report is grim. It has an expense rate of about $600 million per quarter and has cash on hand of $417 million with revenue of $119 million for the quarter. It looks like unless a miracle happens, AMC will be kaput in about 3 months.

From AMC: “As previously disclosed, in the absence of significant increases in attendance from current levels or the availability of significant additional sources of liquidity, at the existing cash burn rate, the Company anticipates that existing cash resources would be largely depleted by the end of 2020 or early 2021. Thereafter, to meet its obligations as they become due, the Company will require additional sources of liquidity and/or increases in attendance levels. The required amounts of additional liquidity will be material. Due to these factors, as previously disclosed, substantial doubt exists about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern for a reasonable period of time.”
 
Yes, maybe FIAT will take them over and convert all AMC theaters into drive-in's. All they'll need is a ramp.
 
ahalpert said:
Bailout time
Click to expand...

That is like people blaming Covid for their lives. Truth is, a lot of people were complaining about their lives even before the pandemic.


Basically, the theaters were failing before Covid. The virus was just the nail in the coffin. A bailout seems unnecessary, as new companies will take up the theater experience after things start to open up, and they will be able to start fresh. Movie theaters are going to go anywhere even without a bailout. Why prop up AMC, instead give those millions or billions to far more culturally and community centric theater experiences?
 
DLD said:
Yes, maybe FIAT will take them over and convert all AMC theaters into drive-in's. All they'll need is a ramp.
Click to expand...

Theaters with charging stations for electric vehicles would be a big hit in LA. Avoid rush hour traffic after work, decompress with a movie, and charge up your car.
 
James0b57 said:
That is like people blaming Covid for their lives. Truth is, a lot of people were complaining about their lives even before the pandemic.


Basically, the theaters were failing before Covid. The virus was just the nail in the coffin. A bailout seems unnecessary, as new companies will take up the theater experience after things start to open up, and they will be able to start fresh. Movie theaters are going to go anywhere even without a bailout. Why prop up AMC, instead give those millions or billions to far more culturally and community centric theater experiences?
Click to expand...

Im not saying the government should give AMC a handsome profit. I just think that anyone who is being forced out of business (especially bars and restaurants) for the sake of saving the rest of us should be compensated for their lost business. After this, we can make sure that pandemic insurance is available and they can buy it or be on their own next time.

AMC may not have been doing that well, but they werent at risk of going bankrupt this year. We bailed out the airlines. (Because politicians are frequent fliers.)
 
Bars and restaurants are also a turnover prone business, working on very small margins. Most of those that went under in the last half a year probably had a high probability of going under anyway.

PS. On the other hand, my favorite Japanese/Chinese buffet was reopening on Tuesday after half a year out. I plan on going, with no small degree of trepidation. But I'll wait it out a little.
 
It also needs to be said that the modern (pre-Covid) theater chain business was inherently an unstable one, as it was created by a fiat from the US government. This ought not be confused with the pre-war/pre-TV system, when theaters were owned by the studios. The current system buckled under the onslaught of the VCR's but was bound to go down from the online entertainment sooner or later.

The same goes for cable television too.
 
Hopefully towns and cities of all sizes will see the benefit of a small indie film cinema in their downtown. Luckily the local cinema center in my hometown is owned outright by the nonprofit due to a generous grant / donation 25 years ago. I do know many brewpubs and restaurants that are doing solid business. Whether this will be viewed as horrendous mistake I don’t know. They’ve been Open here since May. I know many that have increased their visits and tipping to ensure these places are open next year. If I had to predict I’d guess we will see more restaurant/movie houses coming to smaller cities where commercial rents are lower. I wouldn’t be surprised if three years from now we only have a quarter of today’s screens.
 
One of those bad news, really bad news, more really bad news .... some good news sequence.

Consumer demand for high-speed internet surged last quarter at NBCUniversal parent Comcast even as theme park revenue plunged 80% in a mixed earnings report that reflected the ongoing pandemic. Theatrical revenue, for instance, plunged 95%, home entertainment sales surged nearly 50%.

Peacock sign-ups hit 22 million, exceeding every internal engagement metric for the new streaming service — even without the Olympics or The Office — the company said Thursday. At last check — a media conference in mid-September — it had 15 million sign-ups, which was up 50% from the 10 million Comcast reported with its second quarter numbers in July.
Click to expand...

https://deadline.com/2020/10/comcas...lion-sign-ups-q3-sales-profit-dip-1234605515/
 
Gonna be a sad day if theaters go belly up. As someone who is old enough to remember a time before home video, the movie theater experience is part of what made me want to be a filmmaker. It wasn't just about the film, it was the pre-release anticipation, the premiere, the opening weekend, and the shared audience experience. There was some glory in that, not just for the audience but for the filmmakers as well and I wanted to be a part of that. Now you make a movie and it gets dumped online and arrives at someone's house with all the grandeur of turning a faucet, one droplet in an endless, onrushing stream of content. Hard to get excited about that. This shouldn't matter. That you made your film and told your story and gave some viewers a diverting, possibly enlightening experience should be enough. But it ain't the same. It's like asking someone who wanted to be a musician selling out arenas and now they gotta settle with doing concerts in their living room over Zoom. I'm sure it's a nice experience, but it's not the same.
 
I don't expect the theatrical experience to completely die because it offers an adequately-ceremonious and appropriate outing to teens and poor youngsters at the right price, not to mention a courtship opportunity at any age. Plus the cinephiles.

Those groups must amount to 50% of the theater-going public. Enough to keep 1 movie house per 100,000 people in business?

Multiplexes with fewer screens and more grandeur. Indy art houses with comfy couches and gourmet chefs for your pre- or post-screening meal?

If you come, they will build it...
 
Indeed, while the big multiplexes are on death's door, there may be an opportunity for smaller operations. The big multiplex chains and the major film distributors would have to find a new revenue sharing deal that gives more of the money to the theater owners to stay open. That would depend upon how well the streaming revenue is working for them.
 
If the fear lingers on for years , folks will find other equally enjoyable activities than movies. I’ve been going pretty steadily to my local pub twice a week for most of the pandemic until recently ( flairing up in Midwest so I’m giving it a rest). I don’t hear anyone talking about how much they miss the movies. Maybe a large segment of the population has moved on. Takes 30 days to break a habit. We haven’t seen the non stop film marketing that reinforces how much we like going to movies whether we do once a week or once every five years . Our collective society has daily reinforced that we like movies. I don’t know, especially with the lack of must see spectacle films coming out over the next few years If anyone will care in 2 years.
 
Do people say pub in texas?

What with all the releases pushed back to next year, 2021 should have a glut of must-see movies
 
nice article in NYT about the prospects of survival for arthouse cinemas (and it's actually somewhat better than for the big chains)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/...n=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=collection

Interesting bit about one of the owners:
For Nicolaou, abandoning cinemas is unfathomable, because he knows nothing else.

After moving with his family from Cyprus to Queens when he was 12, Nicolaou started working at cinemas in Manhattan at age 15, eventually managing a motley mix of pornographic and art-house theaters. In his early 20s, he began scooping up theaters from aging owners, and at his peak, in the 1980s, he owned nine, staying in the business as cinema chains muscled in.

His biggest joy, he said, was to save theaters treasured by the community. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation recently honored him for keeping alive Cinema Village, a former firehouse on East 12th Street that is all of 23 feet wide; it was also the rare theater to screen “The Interview,” the 2014 film satirizing North Korea that reportedly precipitated a Sony hack. “He’s independent, he’s his own man, he’s the real old American dream,” said the director and actor Abel Ferrara, who made a film about Nicolaou, “The Projectionist,” that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last year.
Click to expand...
 
On the original "Gilmore Girls" (the one with Lauren Graham), there was a set where the locals watched classic movies. It was basically a bar/coffee house with couches rather than chairs and a film projector (if my memory holds). Well, replace the projector with a 88" 8K TV for $30,000, get a 300 Mbps/internet, subscription to all the major streamers and you can start showing movies tomorrow. The opening night it's going to be a classic James Bond feature with a salad bowl. $25 per behind.
 
Side note to the above - home audio is basically dead too. However, one could probably invest $20,000-$30,000 into a stereo system and have "audiophile" nights much the same way as above. Coffee will still have to be of the highest quality.
 
NBC Universal moved the marquee EPL match up of Manchester City vs. Liverpool (the last two champions and the current title favorites) onto their streaming service. I guess I'll watch the highlights on YouTube later on. There are probably pirated streams out there too. Back in the oughties, I used to watch a lot of matches over Sopcast, where a Russian language broadcast was fairly easy to find. As a peer-to-peer network, the more people joined in, the better the stream became.

Then there were other pirated streaming sites like Roja Diirecta. Most of those were removed.

There were also several popular highlight sites but those were made superfluous when pretty much every league got itself a YouTube channel.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top