AMC Entertainment CEO and president Adam Aron said all AMC Theatres sold out Friday morning as the theater chain reopened amid the coronavirus pandemic.
What’s going on?
AMC reopened almost 600 theaters across the country Friday — 100 of which are in major cities like Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Miami and Las Vegas.
Aron told Fox Business that theaters limited capacity to 30% so many theaters had “sold out.”
- “Welcome, America, back to the movies. We’re only selling 30% of our seats, and so we are sold out today almost all across the country.”
- “We’ve been waiting for this for five months, and we’ve spent so much time and effort to make sure that we get opened safely, cleanly, responsibly. Everybody’s wearing masks. Social distancing is very important. We set up plexiglass shields.”
Cheap tickets
- Another factor for the sellout — cheap tickets. AMC announced earlier in August that it would be selling tickets for as low as $0.15 on Aug. 20 to celebrate the reopening, as I wrote about for Deseret.com.
Risk free?
I attended a Zoom panel discussion hosted by the National Association of Theater Owners on Friday, which included a panel of experts and theater owners, including Aron.
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Aron said reopening theaters for audience would help restore confidence in the industry.
- “Opening up our theaters and opening up our industry’s theaters was the single, biggest, most-important issue to restore consumer confidence so our industry could recover from a more than five-month shutdown.”
- “They need to know movie-going is safe, no matter where you see a movie.”