AMC Stock Jumps on Rumors of Takeover By Amazon

[William Kucharski]

Amazon May Buy Distressed AMC Theater Chain in Seismic Hollywood Streaming Shift

Jeff Bezos can use AMC’s 600 theaters and 200 million North America, Europe and Middle East customers as “marketing weigh stations,” said one insider. No offers to the theater chain. Yet

[Bobby Henderson]

Considering AMC's currently deplorable financial situation a buy-out from a company like Amazon might be the only hope of keeping the theater chain somewhat intact. If Jeff Bezos waited around for AMC to utterly collapse into Chapter 7 he probably wouldn't be the only buyer of AMC's assets. The chain would be picked apart like vultures snacking on road kill.

Amazon at least has an entertainment business; the cinemas would at least serve a purpose of showcasing Amazon's movies (as well as showing movies from other distributors to keep anti-trust regulators off its back).

The only other companies currently looking at buying distressed theater chains are "private equity" firms. A couple or more of those outfits are looking at Cineworld and Regal. Those guys are only interested in squeezing what ever money they can out of the theater chain's assets in the fastest way possible. The biggest profit generating play is selling the real estate on which the cinemas are built. And that often means closing and demolishing the cinemas so something more profitable can be built in its place, such as more luxury condos for rich investors to buy and hold like trading cards.

I think the trend of theaters in major cities closing and being converted into other shit is potentially a very destructive thing for the movie industry. Manhattan has far fewer theaters than it did in the past. It would be an absurd situation if cinemas only existed way out in distant suburbs or smaller cities and towns. The movie industry needs a decent number of "flagship" cinema locations. But real estate prices in traditional flagship markets like NYC and LA are so high that a cinema building amounts to a vast waste of space.

If Amazon got into the cinema game and actually put money into the venues to make them better it could push other competing movie studios and streaming providers into doing the same thing. And that might actually be the very thing that convinces studios to increase the length of the exclusive theatrical release window.

[Jim Cassedy]

Maybe they'll run the theaters they way they ran the AMAZON-GO stores here in San Francisco.
No tickets - - just walk in, grab some snacks, sit down & watch a movie, and then they face-scan
you on the way out & it all automatically gets charged to your Amazon account!

-->Actually, Amazon just shut down all of its' walk-in/walk out "Amazon Go" stores here in SF last
month for a variety of reasons, among them being the fact that this city still has not recovered from
the pandemic shut-down, with many businesses either just 'gone' or they have most of their
employees working from home- thus there wasn't enough lunch-time "grab & go" foot traffic to
support keeping them in operation. The other big problem was that a significant number of people
walking out with merchandise didn't have Amazon accounts, ( )and were simply hopping over
the exit gates without paying. ( Not unusual to see here in SF, where leaping over fare gates at
public transit stations has almost become an Olympic sport) Uncontrolled shoplifting is also a large
part of the reason stores like Walgreens & Rite-Aid are almost completely abandoning operations here)

[Mike Blakesley]

It would make it handy for sure... buy your office supplies, your furniture and home goods, and your movie tickets for the weekend all in one app.

The whole rampant shoplifting thing is amazing to me. The laws favor the crooks. It makes no sense and the politicians make it sound like the stores are the bad guys for wanting to stay in business and make a profit. Better quit now about this, I guess. But it's nuts.

[Frank Cox]

I was in Costco some months back when I saw two guys putting all kinds of stuff into pockets inside of their coats. When I walked by they just gave me a big grin and carried on.

[William Kucharski]

The whole rampant shoplifting thing is amazing to me. The laws favor the crooks. It makes no sense and the politicians make it sound like the stores are the bad guys for wanting to stay in business and make a profit. Better quit now about this, I guess. But it's nuts.

It is.

At my local retail stores the latest items to be locked up (it's not just getting an employee to unlock the case, they have to take it to the register for you) are auto headlights (small, valuable) and… laundry detergent.

[Jim Cassedy]

Alamo Drafthouse brings your food & drink right to your seat during the show- - Maybe some Amazon guy will come & drop
packages you've ordered in your lap while you're watching the movie. Or maybe they could install awholebuncha Amazon
Lockers in the lobby so you can pick up your packages there. How about a discount if you go to see a movie on your
"Amazon Day"? The possibilities and potential puns are practically unlimited.

[Bobby Henderson]

Uncontrolled shoplifting is also a large part of the reason stores like Walgreens & Rite-Aid are almost completely abandoning operations here)

I don't understand how a criminal element can even exist in San Francisco given the really extreme costs of living there. I thought the SF Bay Area had gone through a big wave of gentrification, just like New York City. The Big Apple still has some serious crime, but the situation today is nothing compared to how bad it was in 1990.

Alamo Drafthouse brings your food & drink right to your seat during the show- - Maybe some Amazon guy will come & drop packages you've ordered in your lap while you're watching the movie.

That would probably be better than the current policy of UPS or FedEx guys just dropping packages on front door steps for the porch pirates to steal. If I order something from Amazon or another online retailer I always have the package sent to my workplace. About the only mail I receive in the mailbox at my house is junk mail to feed into the shredder.

[Jon Dent]

One more step towards real life Buy N Large. Are they selling college degrees yet?

[Mike Blakesley]

About the only mail I receive in the mailbox at my house is junk mail to feed into the shredder.

Yeah. Here in this small town going to the post office is a social outing. (We don't have individual delivery -- one year the post office sent out a survey asking if people wanted that, and it was overwhelmingly voted down.) It's kind of a highlight of my day -- an outing from work. I go to the bank at the same time. Lately the mail is almost always a letdown, although I subscribe to a few magazines still, so it's nice to get those.

Amazon will probably come out with an app where your phone will light up with offers to buy the items that are inserted into the movie via product placement deals.

[Leo Enticknap]

The only other companies currently looking at buying distressed theater chains are "private equity" firms. A couple or more of those outfits are looking at Cineworld and Regal. Those guys are only interested in squeezing what ever money they can out of the theater chain's assets in the fastest way possible. The biggest profit generating play is selling the real estate on which the cinemas are built.

How many of the big chains' sites do they actually own? I had formed the impression that most are leased from commercial real estate megacorps, or malls. When Pacific Theatres closed during the pandemic, it emerged that many of their locations were in malls owned by Rick Caruso, the SoCal commercial property magnate who ran unsuccessfully for mayor of LA last year. Interestingly, Caruso was of the view that a movie theater is crucial to an upmarket mall's viability, and personally took the lead in attracting other operators for some of the theaters that Pacific walked away from. IIRC, AMC took several of them. If he is right about that, one would expect Amazon also to want to keep them open.

If Amazon did gobble a major theater chain, there are some interesting ways in which they could integrate it into their business model, as Jim notes.