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This is pretty good news for the exhibition industry...
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/28/inves...ing/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/28/inves...ing/index.html
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Shares of AMC Entertainment (AMC) have shot up nearly 120% this week as amateur investors show renewed enthusiasm for the movie theater chain.Analysts forecast that AMC's revenues will nearly double in 2021 and 2022 as theaters reopen, but the company still expects to lose money this year and next.Not breaking out the party favors yet."Right now it's just WallStreetBets targeting AMC," Pierantoni said. "But my guess is in the next few weeks you'll see a proper rebound."
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. Yah, maybe pretty good new for AMC, but I'll bet not so good for the small, privately owned independents...but whenever has it be good for the independents?This is pretty good news for the exhibition industry...Comment
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This spike in AMC's stock price sounds a lot like it's more fad trading, kind of like what happened with GameStop stock just recently. Nevertheless, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we're finally nearing the end of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and that the commercial cinema business will recover. Still, the distributors in Hollywood have to do their part and start releasing a lot more movies into theaters and do so exclusively.
Sort of related to AMC, I saw a news story recently that IMAX will order around 1000 new laser projection systems from Barco. The units will be installed "over time" to upgrade existing 2K Xenon-based IMAX theaters. AMC has quite a few IMAX-branded premium auditoriums. To me it's not clear if these new units will be similar to the existing "IMAX with Laser" systems used to replace 15/70mm projection setups in large film-purposed IMAX theaters. Will the new systems even be a dual projector setup or be a single projector? It's also not clear if the upgrades will include the 12 channel sound system in existing IMAX with Laser theaters.Comment
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Many of those 2K IMAX theaters have gotten the 12-channel sound system upgrade already, but are stuck with their sub-par 2K projection system. Even a single 4K projector upgrade would be an improvement for those theaters.
Meanwhile, AMC stock may become the new Gamestop. Or maybe they should add blockchain to their name?Comment
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I'm always a little skeptical when I see headlines like this. Percentages can be absolutely meaningless & misleading, without supporting data. For example, there was recently a headline in a newsletter from my old high school. It said something like "Asian Hate Crimes Were Up 100%" . But if you looked into the actual numbers, there was only 1 reported hate crime last year. The previous year, there were none. So, yeah. . crime was up 100% from the previous year, but.. . .
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AMC will not require vaxxed customers to wear masks in states that allow it.
Could this have something to do with the stock price boom? AMC appeared to have figured out that no-one wants to wear an itchy face mask for hours on end, and that this will affect how we deploy our leisure spending power.
What they are doing here is clever. Their formal policy is that if you have been vaxxed, you don't have to wear a mask to the movies, but there is no enforcement: it's an honor system. "Vaccine passports" are a hot political potato, so they don't want to go there. But the honor system variant is the perfect workaround: it allows AMC to claim that they are doing their due diligence, while at the same time ditching the mask requirement, period.Comment
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Just look at the Trump follower percentages in the States and you will be able to tell if you want to go without a mask to the movies.... I would never set foot in a theater here without wearing one.Originally posted by Leo Enticknap View PostComment
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Like I wrote, this is a contentious political issue, as well as a medical one, with strongly held opinions both ways about mask mandates, if and when to end them, and the use of "vaccine passports" (the practice of government agencies, businesses and employers requiring proof of vaccination as a condition of you working for or doing business with them). This is going to get messy, possibly involving lawsuits going all the way to the SCOTUS (though in the absence of any federal legislation, the legalities will likely be down to individual states, per the Tenth Amendment).
What AMC has done is to try to work around the political divide, by keeping both sides happy. If you want to wear a mask to the movies, that's fine. If you don't, "Have you had your shots, Sir/Ma'am?" The only issue I can foresee is that front-of-house staff may have to deal with the odd idiot who replies in the negative and then announces that (s)he is going in anyway, and just you f***ing try to stop me. But this policy seems to me to be the least worst option, at least until C19 is truly in the rear view mirror and almost no-one feels the need to wear one anymore.
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I think it's hilarious how the "honor system" is all of a sudden a thing. Without rules and checks, people are going to do what they want, and are only honest when it serves their own need/desire. This is reinforced by politicians and media.Their formal policy is that if you have been vaxxed, you don't have to wear a mask to the movies, but there is no enforcement: it's an honor system. Their formal policy is that if you have been vaxxed, you don't have to wear a mask to the movies, but there is no enforcement: it's an honor system.
That said, I think "it's over" is the big thinking in this part of the world. They're having big concerts in Billings, and the Miles City Bucking Horse Sale is two weeks past, and no big outbreak has happened in either place. The number of mask-wearing people coming in to our theatre has gone down to maybe 5%, if even that.Comment
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Mike, I don't recall there being that many cases in Montana. I doubt hospitals there ever ran out of beds for those that did contract it. It also helps that people aren't living on top of each other like around here and in.Salt Lake City. In fact in Utah they are still seeing 200+ cases a day and 4 to 6 deaths from it. And they have one of the highest percentages of fully vaccinated people in tje country. Here in TN we are at 73%, and I am amazed this State pulled that off as there are over 6 million here.Originally posted by Mike Blakesley View Post
The trust system is a joke and I'll still wear a mask around big crowds or when.I'm in a closed in area. At the movies, once I am seated I would certainly take it off. The nearby theaters all did work on HVAC to improve filtration and up the air flow. But ya don't know when the person sneezing in front of you in line has been vaccinated or is a Freedumb Fighter.
Better to be safe than.sorry for tje price of a one Buck mask.Comment
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To be honest, I have the attitude of just letting that "honor system" of the vaccinated play out. Let the chips fall where they may.
I've had COVID-19 already and am fully vaccinated. So I have little concern about getting re-infected with COVID-19 in any serious manner. All my family members, colleagues in my office and close friends have been vaccinated. There are very few people in my in-person life who aren't vaccinated. Those who, by choice, refuse to be vaccinated are gambling with their own lives. So let them. Let those IDIOTS be Darwin Awards Winners if they get hospitalized or get killed by a severe SARS-CoV-2 infection.Comment
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The problem is that those Darwin Award Winners will probably be the first in line at the First aid when they're seriously hit by the virus, taking up valuable resources of all those who were wise enough to get a vaccine. Depending on how many Darwin Award Winners there may be in any given region, that could've fatal consequences for a lot of non-Darwin Award Winners too... So, I'd say you have kind-of a moral duty to get vaccinated.
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I think most people understand the bigger picture motive of getting vaccinated: disrupting the transmission chain of SARS-CoV-2 to both protect themselves and protect other people.
The folks who think the pandemic is fake or exaggerated and refuse to get vaccinated only care about themselves. They don't care about any moral obligation or contributing to the greater good by getting vaccinated. The selfishness of that camp has been plainly clear from the beginning of this pandemic. Every mitigation step has been met with outrage. How dare anyone ask them to make any change or adjustment to their lives, even something minor as having to wear a mask? Granted, some of the adjustments have been very painful (like what happened with cinemas), but I just don't get the sheer level of butt-hurt going on with masks.
Regarding anti-vax people consuming resources (like tax dollars) if they get COVID-19 they might run into some problems with that in the months ahead. As the disease curve in the US continues to draw down many of those emergency funding programs will end too. Many states are already ending extended unemployment benefits. What ever supplemental benefits the government is providing for COVID-19 will end too. But the SARS-CoV-2 virus is going to continue circulating in the population for years to come. The anti-vax, pandemic deniers will be on their own to pay their own medical bills. I would certainly expect health insurance providers to factor in whether a person they cover is vaccinated or not and adjust the person's risk and price of insurance premiums accordingly.
The biggest potential problem I see with unvaccinated people is they serve as "fuel" for SARS-CoV-2 to stay alive, keep circulating and keep having a chance to evolve. Given enough of a chance SARS-CoV-2 could evolve into a completely new, potentially more dangerous strain. Then the world gets dumped back to square one and we start this ordeal all over again. We need to be starving this virus completely out of existence. Sadly too many selfish people in developed countries are getting in the way of that. And it's literally going to take years to get high percentages of populations in developing nations vaccinated.Comment
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There's also the issue of vaccine availability. My wife is from Mauritius and they have sufficient vaccine to do about 8% of the population, but in Africa overall it's less than 2% and there have been problems with vaccines being delivered and left unused (and expired/discarded) due to a lack of trained manpower to administer the shots.
I guess you have to send not just the vaccine but also the inoculation crew and then you have to deal with travel, accommodations and all of that too, which could be interesting in a village way back in the jungle somewhere. Plus keeping this stuff refrigerated, and not getting it stolen, and on and on and on from there...
It's a whole different world from what we're used to, and there's a whole different set of issues to be handled as well.Comment
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