![]() ![]() Over the last decade, theater operators have removed thousands of traditional seats and installed roomier recliners, reducing capacity. Theaters have also introduced mobile food ordering, expanded alcohol sales, invested in projector upgrades, offered private rentals and tried simulcasting concerts and hosting video game tournaments. For the first time in its 102-year history, AMC mounted a national advertising campaign, hiring Nicole Kidman to plead the case for “dazzling images on a huge silver screen.” ( AMC is working on a second one.) On Saturday, most theater operators in the United States offered $3 tickets to every showing as part of the first-ever National Cinema Day. They have built membership programs that offer discounts for repeated visits. ![]() To sell more tickets, theaters are marketing themselves much more aggressively. Gelfond’s point: Auditoriums with extra-large screens, including IMAX venues, can sell out on big weekends between 6 and 9 p.m.) Exclamation point.”Īs successful as theater companies view the summer, they sold only 17 percent of the available seats in the United States, according to EntTelligence, a research firm. “Except in unique cases, nobody needs a 20-plex anymore. Gelfond, the chief executive of IMAX, which licenses its technology to theaters. “About 20 percent of screens - increasingly, experiences like IMAX that make it special and worthwhile - generate 80 percent of the business,” said Richard L. A Chapter 11 reorganization would allow Cineworld to break some of its leases. The company, which is based in London, has reported $8.9 billion in net debt, including $4 billion in lease liabilities. 2 circuit in the United States behind AMC, is preparing to file for bankruptcy. More closures are expected this fall: Cineworld, which operates Regal Cinemas, the No. A few think 25,000 is a healthier target.Ībout 500 screens have closed since the pandemic began, according to the National Association of Theater Owners, a trade organization. There are 40,700 screens in the United States and Canada, and even some theater executives concede that there should be no more than 35,000. One obvious if drastic step, analysts say, is for the biggest theater companies to close thousands of underperforming screens. But hardly anybody agrees on precisely the best way forward. New movies in theaters now movie#Some studios continue to release films on streaming services and in theaters at the same time, or bypass theaters altogether, and the cost of running a theater keeps climbing.Īlmost everyone agrees that the 117-year-old movie exhibition business cannot keep going like this. Summer ticket sales still lagged significantly behind prepandemic levels. “Let the good times roll,” Adam Aron, the chief executive of AMC Entertainment, said during an earnings call last month.Īnd yet, behind that rosy view, instability lurked. The “Top Gun” sequel has taken in an astounding $1.5 billion worldwide, and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” outperformed its 2016 franchise predecessor by 41 percent. Theaters were feeling newly optimistic, largely because “ Top Gun: Maverick” and several other blockbusters showed that people still want to go to the movies. In recent months, the situation didn’t look so dire. ![]() Now, staggering debt and a severe shortage of big movies to show in the months ahead imperil multiplex chains once again. Unwelcome forces - Netflix, 50-inch TVs, the coronavirus pandemic - have buffeted cinemas for years. And as the recent pandemic recedes, Cousins ponders what comes next in the streaming age: how have we changed as cinephiles, and how moviegoing will continue to transform in the digital century, to our collective joy and wonder.The hits just keep on coming. ![]() Touching on everything from Parasite and The Farewell to Black Panther and Lover’s Rock, Cousins seeks out films, filmmakers and communities under-represented in traditional film histories, with a particular emphasis on Asian and Middle Eastern works, as well as boundary-pushing documentaries and films that see gender in new ways. In The Story of Film: A New Generation, Cousins turns his sharp, meticulously honed gaze on world cinema from 2010 to 2021, using a surprising range of works - including Joker, Frozen and Cemetery of Splendor - as launchpads to explore recurring themes and emerging motifs, from the evolution of film language, to technology’s role in moviemaking today, to shifting identities in 21st-century world cinema. A decade after The Story of Film: An Odyssey, an expansive and influential inquiry into the state of moviemaking in the 20th century, filmmaker Mark Cousins returns with an epic and hopeful tale of cinematic innovation from around the globe. ![]()
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