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.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Friday June 19 2020, @07:11PM
Teens go to theaters in order to do things that are the opposite of practicing proper social distancing.
I hope they have face masks on when they . . . well, I hope they use hand sanitizer when they hold hands.
Better idea than holding hands . . . use a meter stick (once called a yardstick). Each person holds one end of the stick, to keep distance, but it's like holding hands. And it doesn't look one bit ridiculous. Nope, not at all.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.