Will there still be summer moviegoing this year? At least one major theater chain is planning on it.
Cinemark CFO Sean Gamble in a call with investors on Wednesday said the theater chain, which like AMC and Regal closed its U.S. locations last month amid the coronavirus pandemic, has been "modeling an approximate four month ramp up, anticipating a July 1 reopen," The Wrap reports.
At the same time, Gamble noted that "we would not be in a scenario where we would be inclined to bring back everything day one." Instead, he said, reopening movie theaters would be "more a dip-our-toe type of approach," per Bloomberg.
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"In our current modeling, we are anticipating that a return to normalcy could take a couple of months to fully get going as a result of staggered theater openings from ongoing governmental limitations, reduced operating hours and potentially ongoing social distancing needs," Gamble also said.
Theaters could, for example, sell half as many seats to ensure customers would be spaced out and socially distanced, a step some chains already began to take shortly before they had to shut down all of their locations entirely. In a scenario where capacity would have to be reduced to 50 percent, Gamble said the chain could still operate "very profitably." Still, openings may need to happen on a "state by state, county by county" basis, he said.
Some movie studios also appear to be betting on July as when theaters can widely resume operations, as Disney recently set Mulan for that month after delaying it from March, and Warner Bros. hasn't delayed Christopher Nolan's Tenet, which is set for July 17. Still, the question remains whether audiences will actually return to movie theaters if a summer opening is actually possible. In a recent poll, when Americans were asked when they would resume their regular activities after coronavirus restrictions are lifted, just 20 percent said they'd so "immediately."
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