New York movie theaters outside of NYC can reopen next week

For the first time since March, many New Yorkers can soon start returning to the movies.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on Saturday announced that movie theaters in the state outside of New York City, and in counties with a low COVID-19 infection rate, can begin reopening next week, CBS News reports.

The New York theaters permitted to reopen starting on Oct. 23 must operate at 25 percent capacity, and they have to be in counties with an infection rate of below 2 percent and which don't have cluster zones.

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Theater chains started to reopen their doors in other states earlier this year ahead of the release of Christopher Nolan's Tenet, which ultimately struggled at the box office while New York City and Los Angeles theaters stayed shuttered. As a result, film studios in recent weeks have been increasingly scrapping plans to release major blockbusters in 2020, although smaller titles remain on the calendar, and Wonder Woman 1984 is still slated for December.

The partial New York reopening of theaters comes after AMC, the world's largest movie theater chain, earlier this week warned that it could run out of cash by the end of 2020 if theater attendance doesn't improve.