The industry was decimated by the pandemic, with theaters shut across the country and new films delayed by Hollywood studios. But now cinemas are ready to fill up their seats again. Will audiences follow?
It’s time to go back to the movies! Now! That was the message sent on Wednesday over and over and over again when all five of Hollywood’s major studios, their independent subsidiaries and the stand-alone indie labels like A24 and Neon gathered in person at an AMC theater to show off their coming summer films and remind moviegoers who have become used to streaming their entertainment during the pandemic why they liked going to the movies in the first place. “I’ll see you in the theaters,” the actor and director John Krasinski said in a video message before a new trailer for “A Quiet Place 2” (the movie opens on May 28). “Marvel movies are made to be seen on the big screen,” Kevin Feige, Marvel’s chief executive, reminded audiences before showing footage of new films. And Ahmir Thompson, better known as Questlove, declared “Long live cinema” before a trailer for his forthcoming documentary “The Summer of Soul.” Vin Diesel, Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne Johnson, Maggie Q, Henry Golding and a handful of other stars also urged audiences to return to the plush seats, to remember their love for theater popcorn, to get back to the movies. But it was the Terminator who got the room buzzing. “You need the big screen,” Arnold Schwarzenegger told those assembled. “If you have the movie and you don’t have the theaters, then you have nothing.” He added: “We have seen over this last year, the pandemic year, that people watched movies on a little iPhone and iPad. And you have to put the glasses on to see what’s going on there. And they are missing the special effects and visual effects and all the great stuff that you usually see on the big screen.” And then he led a chant of “We are back! We are back!” If only it was so easy. Like so many businesses, the movie theater industry has been ravaged by the economic effects of the pandemic. Theaters were starved of audiences when lockdowns went into effect, and studios delayed new releases or, in some cases, put them out on streaming services. Some chains have shut down and others have declared bankruptcy. AMC Entertainment’s chief executive, Adam Aron, said this month that the chain had been “within months or weeks of running out of cash five different times between April 2020 and January 2021.
