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posted by martyb on Friday June 19 2020, @07:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the netflix-n-chill dept.

Movie theaters will look vastly different if they survive COVID-19:

thanks to mass closings and skyrocketing debt for theater franchises during COVID-19, the future of the businesses that offered me so much comfort as a teen is in peril. In uncertain times, one thing seems increasingly clear: The theater industry must change to survive. Here's how movie theaters might look in the future.

[...] Sure, companies like AMC hated the super cheap subscription-based app Moviepass, but the subscription model is an increasingly popular and time-tested method of ensuring revenue -- some theaters in the UK have been using such services for more than a decade.

[...] Drive-in theaters, which thrived in the '50s and early '60s, are already finding a second (or third) life amid the pandemic, thanks to the built-in social distancing and -- for the reason many of them still survived before COVID-19 -- nostalgia.

[...] How exactly this will look remains to be seen, but tech and streaming giants like Apple, Amazon and Netflix have either considered buying theaters or already committed to doing so. While wholesale corporate takeovers are probably a long shot, Silicon Valley has the capital to buy out floundering theater franchises and incorporate them into their existing integrative business models -- and doing so could dramatically reorient the movie theater landscape.

Or, more of them could serve food and beer like Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2020, @04:05PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2020, @04:05PM (#1010082)

    Movie theaters need something compelling to get people out of their homes, and they have less and less appeal as time passes.

    This has always been a specter looming over movie theaters. Did you ever wonder why 4:3 aspect TV's (i.e. NTSC Analog) were designed as 4:3 aspect? Because at the time TV was being designed, movies were 4:3 aspect. When TV's started to become popular, the movie industry and the theaters started to offer "widescreen" movies to offer "something compelling to get people out of their homes".

    But yes, your point is valid. Many people have a more than good enough setup at home now that there is less reason to go to a theater. And the advantage of remaining home is one does not get shafted for a $13 bucket of popcorn and a $6.50 soda that contains $0.25 worth of syrup, water, and ice.