Even in cities and states where it’s still an option, not a lot of people are willing to go to the movies right now. That reluctance has led to big losses for both the theater business and the film industry, which depends on box-office grosses for the lion’s share of any movie’s overall income. According to a pleasent by the MPAA to Congress late last month, roughly 100,000 jobs in the American theater business could be lost without federal assistance.
There is one American company that’s seena relative boost in businessduring the pandemic, however. Cinemark, which runs 332 theaters in North America, has implemented a new option called private watch parties, where $99 to $149 gets patrons a private theater in which to watch a film with up to 20 trusted friends, along with a steep discount on concessions. (Now they just cost an arm!) Cinemark reports that it’s sold over 22,000 watch parties since debuting the program in August, alongside enhanced cleaning practices to meet health and safety requirements.
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The details behind booking a private watch party can differ dramatically between individual Cinemark locations, as can the films on offer. Cinemark’s website specifically mentions new films like Christopher Nolan’sTenet,Honest Thiefstarring Liam Neeson, the inexplicable Robert de Niro family comedyThe War With Grandpa, and the Stevie Nicks concert film24 Karat Gold,alongside returning classics likeBack to the Future.
Cinemark is also putting many old and not-so-old seasonal films into the watch party rotation for Halloween, includingBeetlejuice, Hocus Pocus,the original 1984A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Blumhouse’s 2019 reboot ofHalloween. Alternatively, the truly desperate can, at certain participating theaters, bring ina DVD or Blu-ray of their ownto play on the big screen. (Surely, a private “watch party” that just hooks a video game console up to the projector cannot be far behind.)
Private watch parties have proven popular with audiences nationwide. While individual ticket sales still reportedlymake up the bulk of salesat individual Cinemark locations, the watch parties have gotten a lot of interest from patrons who otherwise wouldn’t be going back to the movies at all. As a result, Cinemark is reportedly hoping to continue the concept in a theoretical post-pandemic future, but it also depends on factors like foot traffic. In theory, once theaters are fully open again and the movie release schedule kicks back up, Cinemark won’t have the spare screens to use on five to seven private watch parties per day.
In the meantime, however, Cinemark appears to be the healthiest of the major American theater chains during these lean pandemic months. Its two biggest competitors, AMC and Regal Cinemas,are in rougher shape; AMC is still in heavy debt after a renegotiation in July, and Regal recently announced that it would shut all of its theaters back down for the foreseeable future.
Cinemark’s stocks jumped 10% on the announcement that many of New York’s movie theaters could reopen as early as October 23rd, which isseen as a “sympathy bounce.“Cinemark only operates a single theater in New York state, in Rochester, but AMC owns several dozen, and New York is one of the biggest theater markets in the U.S.
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