What's the latest theatre to close or open you have heard about?

[Mark Ogden]

Don't apologize. Threads get derailed all the time here. What starts out as the schematic for a Strong rectifier turns into whether or not the overhead cam engine was a good idea, then goes back to the rectifier. Common.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Apologies. Covid was mentioned and our theatre was fresh off a couple cases and having to scramble to cover the projection slots left vacant. It was just a tangent, but not entirely off topic for a thread about theatres closing. Did not intend to derail the thread.

[Bobby Henderson]

I take the COVID topic pretty seriously. I knew a few people locally who were killed by it in the first couple years of the pandemic. Still, I haven't seen the latest wave of COVID getting much news coverage at all. Nevertheless, I don't consider it being the same as colds and flu. Will the latest wave of COVID affect attendance at commercial movie theaters? That's hard to say.

I've had COVID at least once that I know of for certain. The symptoms didn't seen any worse than a mild cold. But I lost my ability to smell or taste anything. It took months for those senses to fully recover. I've heard of some people who never recover those senses after a COVID infection. Not being able to taste or smell isn't nearly as bad as going blind or deaf. But it ain't great either. I lost about 10 pounds. Another thing COVID did to me was adversely affect my sense of balance. Not long after I got over the initial illness I had to get on the roof of my house to cut back some limbs from nearby trees. Getting up there scared the shit out of me. Previously I could walk all over that roof like it was no big deal. I went from that to not being able to get off my hands and knees. It was like full-on vertigo. It took a couple of years before my inner ear functions got back to normal.

For most people, getting COVID probably won't be any worse than an average cold. But it's still going to kill some people. And that's added to all the other things that kill people. Influenza on its own can be bad enough some years.

The more serious threats to movie-theater attendance figures are the stupidly short theatrical release window and a general public that appears ever more financially broke. We have a housing industry price bubble that is even more perversely big than the one nearly 20 years ago. Shit is about to break.

[Lyle Romer]

I'm not sure how this discussion about COVID ended up in this thread. With respect to moviegoing, nobody really cares how bad the winter flu season is so why, at this point, would anybody really care how bad the summer COVID surge is?

Personally, I have no idea if I've had COVID. It's pretty unlikely that I haven't. If I'm sick I do what I've always done and stay away from other people. If I feel like crap, I don't really care if I have COVID, the flu or a bad cold and therefore have no desire to find out exactly what I have.

After the reactions I had to the vaccine and first booster I do not anticipate ever getting a booster again. The duration was shorter but I felt worse after the vaccine doses than I've felt from any illness over the past 4 years.

At this point, COVID is just another in the long list of annoying illnesses to deal with. Anybody avoiding movie theatres or other gatherings out of fear of becoming infected with it might as well just never leave their home for anything for the rest of their life. I'm somewhat of a germophobe but the COVID pandemic has turned some people into a version of germophobe that makes me look like my behaviors (some of which I've suppressed significantly) are the most rational behaviors possible.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Between vaccination, natural immunity, and improved treatment, fewer people are dying from COVID (currently).

Thankfully! I blame myself for my recent bout, I did not re-up my vaxx after recovering from covid in Jan23. Now they say wait 4 months and then get the booster again.

My metrics in the US (other than myself or acquaintances catching it), has been to look at the wastewater testing data every so often.
https://www.wastewaterscan.org/en

The CDC also still reports on increases in ER visits and deaths
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra...tatracker-home

Your +10% figure seems about right for the current upswing.

[Harold Hallikainen]

I'm glad you recovered from your latest bout! I've been tracking "excess deaths" for several years now ( https://hallikainen.org/cv/ ). Currently, the number of deaths per week is running about 10% above the same week in 2017-2019. I attribute this to an aging population. For those born in 1950, the average (might be median) expected lifespan is 68.2 years. 68 years ago, the population was still in the baby boom upswing, so we would expect an increase in the number of deaths 68 years later (now). For example, averaging the number of deaths expected in 2017 through 2019 based on births in 1949 through 1951, we get 3,700,333 expected deaths. For 2024, we can look back 68 years to 1956 and see that there was an increase of 13.8% over the 1949-1951 period. So, we might expect the number of deaths this year to be 13.8% above the 2017-2019 period. Currently, it's running about 10% higher. For the week of January 1, 2021, the deaths were 48% above the same week in 2017-2019.

Between vaccination, natural immunity, and improved treatment, fewer people are dying from COVID (currently).

[Ryan Gallagher]

Speaking of COVID. While no longer declared a pandemic and no longer tracked in the same way... the summer surge is real down here. I just got over my second bout of it, managed to spread it to one of our part time projectionists too before I even had symptoms. I want to blame the summer camp kids that take over our theatre this time of year, but it could have been anything. Last summer the camp wave took out about 3 of the camp counselors.

Hopefully the uptick is not severe enough to keep people out of seats, but I'll applaud anyone choosing to wear a mask right now to attend an indoor event with a bunch of strangers. On the other hand if too many people did it... would probably start to scare away the more cautious people from attending. The optics of it are problematic in Texas, and it shouldn't be.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

You're right, and AMC had the most debt... not too long ago, but aside from that I am pretty sure a lot of the excess debt theater chains still have was COVID induced.

[Harold Hallikainen]

On why someone would buy a Cinema out of bankruptcy, I wonder how profitable a Cinema is before debt service (EBIT)? Buying the assets out of bankruptcy, you don't have the debt service the bankrupt company had, so it could be profitable. It seems like the woes of the big chains are due to too much debt.

[Leo Enticknap]

From ScreenDaily:

Cineworld reportedly looking to close up to 25 UK cinemas

By Geoffrey Macnab

UK-based exhibitor Cineworld is reported to be looking to close as many as 25 of its worst performing UK cinemas, to re-negotiate rents with a further 50 and ring fence the top performing 25 sites.

Sky News today reported these proposals will be formally outlined to creditors in the coming months as the troubled cinema giant, which is being advised by restructuring specialists AlixPartners, looks to streamline its UK business.

The reports of the swingeing cuts come as rumours swirl about what is happening at the Cineworld sites involving equipment leaseback deals and as-yet-unpaid unpaid rents.

A Cineworld spokesperson said, “We continue to review our options but we don’t comment on rumours and speculation.”

The company’s main landlords are understood to include such major companies as Legal & General and Landsec.

Some observers are describing the current restructuring as being for the long-term benefit of the sector. “Valuations [in cinema exhibition] are at an all-time low,” one property expert told Screen. “That mainly reflects the fact that no-one quite believes the credit of these businesses and that they have been waiting for this restructure for the best part of two or three years.

“The market needs to get this out of the way, understand how these businesses will look going forward and accept a haircut on rent if they have to, but their valuations will hopefully improve as a consequence of the certainty and the clarity.”

If the 25 Cineworld sites are closed as predicted, there is likely to be a scramble among other operators to acquire at least some of them.

When Tim Richards, CEO of cinema outfit Vue, was asked this week whether his company might look to take over sites from rival operators, he replied: “Absolutely. They would need to be qualitatively complimentary with our circuit but I think we’ve already demonstrated over the last 20 years that M&A and purchasing cinemas is part of our DNA.”

One question yet to be addressed is the level of job losses that the cinema closures will cause if they go ahead.

But the question is, why did Sony get back into the theatrical business after it was a disaster for them the first time around and especially at a time when the theatrical business is doing so badly?

My guess would be for the same reason that Netflix bought the Egyptian and Disney has the El Capitan: as a public-facing shop window. Even if it no longer contributes much to the bottom line, a theatrical release still, in many people's minds, distinguishes a "proper" movie from a straight to video job or a TV show, and Sony now has a prominent theater chain, with brand recognition, which which to market its movies. Furthermore, Sony could potentially leverage these sites to promote its consumer electronics products, too.

[Ian Puffenberger]

Off-topic from Alamo, but this is devastating for the Northern Virginia side of the DC area:

https://www.ffxnow.com/2024/06/14/th...tarting-monday

After being closed all of four days, Tysons Showplace Icon at The Boro reopened June 21 as Look Dine-in Cinemas at The Boro.

https://www.ffxnow.com/2024/06/18/ne...con-in-tysons/

Also Marquee Cinemas Southpoint 9 in Fredericksburg, VA closed on June 30. This was my middle school, high school, and summer-breaks-from-college theater and I have lots of fond memories there, perhaps most notably seeing each Lord of the Rings film multiple times. It opened in April 1998 with five stadium and four sloped theaters; the two scope screens were THX certified. But none of them were very big and even before the pandemic it failed to keep up with the times, especially with two more modern theaters in town. My brother worked there as a 35mm projectionist for a couple years in the 2000s and was there for their fairly early conversion to digital in 2007.

[Martin Brooks]

That's for sure. My day job is, I run an independent Carquest auto parts store. When the Carquest parent company was bought out by Advance Auto Parts a few years ago, they told us over and over that nothing major would change, it would be business as usual, and we would now have access to Advance's warehouses as well as our own, making us by far the largest supplied parts chain in the country.

Then they immediately started making changes, swapping product lines for cheaper ones, closing distribution centers, shedding company stores, consolidating or eliminating corporate jobs, tightened return policies, raised costs on services, made us buy case lots of hundreds of things we used to buy by the 'each,' and basically implemented every bogus "enhancement" in the book, each of which was touted to make things better for us, but in reality just cost us more money and/or increased our workload, or both. The whole operation is being run by a bunch of algorithms. And their stock has been tanking lately.

So I do fear for the future of Alamo Drafthouse (A Sony Company), and Carquest.

Not a good comparison. A Carquest Auto Parts store and Advance Auto Parts are in the same business and presumably sell the same products. So it's natural that there would be changes to gain efficiency and improve profits. It's normal for an acquiring company to combine back end operations, accounting, acquisitions, HR, product lines, etc.
But Sony doesn't currently own another theater company. So there's nothing to combine Alamo with, aside from perhaps I.T., and finance. Also, an Alamo guy is still going to run Alamo. But the question is, why did Sony get back into the theatrical business after it was a disaster for them the first time around and especially at a time when the theatrical business is doing so badly? Loew's Cineplex (which included the Sony theaters) declared bankruptcy in 2001. Almost 1.5 billion tickets were sold in North America in 2001. This year, it's going to be around 635 million. Unless Sony is looking for a tax loss.

I don't think there's any fear of Alamo only playing Sony films because Sony doesn't produce that much. They're going to release 15 films this entire calendar year. That's not enough to keep a multiplex filled. That's more than Warner, Disney or Paramount, but fewer films than Universal (22 films).

[Jim Cassedy]

Sony/Alamo announced today that they are in the process of acquiring the necessary
leases and permits to re-open the 5 theaters in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and the
one in Minnesota that were closed when the franchisee who operated them went
bankrupt. Due to the number of locations involved and other variables, they will not
re-open all at once, and the exact timeline for any of the re-openings was not announced.
But whenever that happens, they will be "Alamo owned and operated" venues.

[also, there is no truth to the rumor going around that Sony is going to make them
start popping their corn in fish oil or adding sushi flavored milkshakes to their menu]

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

The Brew N View did not have any regular scheduled maintenance according to the person I talked to. If they failed to run the projectors for a couple hours a week, then they likely have bricked media blocks, and or IMB's. But 9 people a week...Sheesh!

[Mike Blakesley]

Yes, it’s only about 15 mins from Laurel to Billings. For us it’s about 100 minutes.