San Francisco Movie Theaters Will Remain Shut Down Due To a Concessions Ban
By George Robbins
Movie theaters are kind of in trouble right now and that doesn’t seem to be something that will change any time in the near future. It has already been discussed at length, but theaters are very much losing revenue due to this pandemic and nothing will change the fact it is going to continue. Not only is it going to continue, but from what we can glean from the near future, it is going to continue for a long time moving forward. The pandemic has essentially made it near impossible for theaters to actually make money during this period in time due to the restrictions in place. With those restrictions, there are way too many obstacles in the way for theaters to actually bring people in.
People are wary of theaters now due to the pandemic and it is for very obvious reasons as people are not sure if they are safe enough. In order to follow new standards set by the government as a means to alleviate people’s fears as well as prevent more virus cases from cropping up, theaters have been given restrictions. Mainly, those restrictions are set up as limiters for the number of people who are actually allowed to be present at one time in theaters. This is not the only limitation as theaters must also adhere to the distancing policy, so smaller theaters won’t even really get the chance to reach the limited occupancy numbers. Needless to say, these restrictions have not been easy on movie theater owners.
Beyond just the restrictions has been the fact that nobody is truly willing to put their own health at risk just to go see a movie that they can wait to see digitally. People are getting used to waiting for movies to come out at this point. There have been delays left and right in terms of movie releases and people recognize that the delays are only getting worse. This directly relates to the fact that people don’t want to take any chances by going out to theaters. This is why ‘Tenet’ pretty much failed in the domestic market where the pandemic is a pretty rough situation right now.
Domestically, no one know how to handle the virus and it is affecting the market as a whole because people are trying to navigate the pandemic. It is the same in the rest of the world, but the domestic market is where the film industry works to make a good chunk of their revenue. This is why we are now seeing so many movies being pushed back so far after ‘Tenet‘ failed to maintain an audience after its first week. The movie actually had a fairly strong opening weekend in both the international and domestic markets, but the following month or so in the domestic market was nothing other than disappointing. As such, studios came to understand that people would not be going out to theaters much for the foreseeable future.
In all actuality, people will more than likely not be going out to theaters in mass once again until there is some kind of vaccine out there. This is to be expected given the nature of the pandemic and the fact that the virus can spread so easily. People are much more wary nowadays and the restrictions keep them even more wary. If people hear that there are restrictions in place when they go out somewhere, then they are much less likely to want to stay there. With this in mind, most films have been pushed out of this year’s and, some even, from next year’s line-up by studios who still want their films to be released in theaters. Even now, nothing is set in stone and dates can once again change around at any point.
Although studios are in the same boat with everything they’re going through, they are still competing, so there is still a lot for them to think about right now. If something changes with the pandemic situation, they have to be able to very quickly move their release dates around. This makes things even more difficult to maneuver, but it still doesn’t change the fact that they are still working on making money. This complicates things heavily against movie theaters though, as at least theaters were making some kind of money when ‘Tenet’ released, but now they won’t be getting much else. They could get some money here and there with movie re-releases, but it just isn’t all that cost effective.
Due to cost effectiveness, movie theaters have been thinking about once again shutting their doors to the public because they didn’t think the current climate was a good one for them. Until recently, though, many were not really willing to take the plunge to re-close their doors, but one company did it. Regal Cinemas made the announcement that they would once again be shutting their doors to everybody and that they would not be re-opening any time in the near future. This was certainly not any kind of surprise because of the aforementioned issues with delays and people not wanting to go out to theaters. The issues now are the fact that there are still theaters that want to open their doors.
It would make sense if theaters that haven’t opened their doors back up to the public yet would be okay with just leaving their doors shut at this time. This is not the case though as many theaters still want to actually open back up again to the public as some need to bring in some kind of revenue. It is mainly theater chains that have been trying to decide whether or not to shut their doors once again. Unfortunately for the smaller theaters that want to reopen, they don’t really have much of an opportunity to do that now. Between restrictions and movie delays, they have no choice now but to keep their doors closed to people. The most interesting case of this is being seen out in San Francisco.
In San Francisco right now, a ban was made public where theaters that did reopen will not be able to sell any kind of concessions. This means that people would not be able to buy any food or drinks while they are at the movies which is how theaters make a good portion of their money. They only make a portion of their revenue from ticket sales as they have to split the money from sales with the studios that give them their films. Most of the income that they generate actually comes from concessions, so reopening their doors without being able to sell food or drink has essentially become a worthless endeavor. So even theaters that want to open up will have no choice but to stay closed in San Francisco.