Former FDA commissioner thinks AMC Theatres' noncommittal mask policy is a terrible idea

AMC plans to reopen its movie theaters without requiring all guests to wear masks — but the former commissioner of the FDA thinks they'll soon have to "rethink" that.

The nation's largest movie theater chain, AMC Theatres, on Thursday announced its plan to reopen next month, saying that like Regal and Cinemark, it won't require guests to wear masks except in areas where they're already required to do so. The company faced backlash for this decision, especially after AMC CEO Adam Aron said it was reached because "we did not want to be drawn into a political controversy." Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, on Friday argued Aron's got it all wrong.

"I don't think this is a political issue," Gottlieb told CNBC. "There's very few things that we can do to try to prevent wider spread and another epidemic heading into the fall, and [wearing masks] is one of them."

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Gottlieb predicted, in fact, that AMC will have to "change their position" on this "when they find that nobody's showing up at their theaters," and he added that personally, he wouldn't go to a movie theater where masks aren't required.

"If you go into a theater, and you're trying to be careful, and you see people who are unmasked in the theater, you're going to be very uncomfortable going there again," Gottlieb said. "So I think that they're going to have to rethink this if they want to get people back into those congregate settings. That's a high-risk setting."

AMC has said it's putting other safety measures in place including new cleaning procedures and reduced capacities, with Aron telling CNN, "we think that a month from now our theaters are going to be safe." We'll get a sense of whether audiences widely agree after the first major blockbuster debuts; as of now, that's set to be Disney's Mulan, scheduled for July 24.

Update: After this article's publication, AMC Theatres reversed course and said it would require all guests to wear masks. Brendan Morrow