For the past century, going to the movies was something for every generation: a family matinee, a grown up date night, girls night out, a teen first date. But the pandemic not only shut down theaters for a time, but rerouted our attention, too.
Since March of 2020, around 1,000 movie theaters have closed. That's according to Phil Contrino, a member of the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO).
"We can't track it as closely as we'd like to," he said. "And what happens is that when something closes, it often gets scooped up by a bigger midsize chain or something like that."
One big problem the experts agree on is a lack of movies being released. There were some successes this summer — but what theater owners needed was an August-September blockbuster.
Tim Gray with Variety said that in 2020, movie companies were releasing movies on streaming rather than risk holding on to them for an indeterminate amount of time. He added that COVID put a big dent in production. But, he said, there's a difference between movie studios and movie theaters doing well.
"A lot of these movies are very low budget so they'll be profitable. I mean, like Don't Worry Darling with Harry Styles did home runs at the box office, but they're pretty low budget so they'll be profitable," Gray said. "But that doesn't help theater owners because theater owners don't care about profitability. They just want bodies in the theaters to buy their concessions."
Debbie Monterrey further explored the current state of movie theaters for Total Information AM. Listen:
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