Five years on, Covid-19 continues to hit theaters hard

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Major U.S. Movie Theater Chain Collapses Into Bankruptcy

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The U.S. movie theater industry has taken a big blow from the COVID-19 pandemic as U.S. movie theater chain CMX Cinemas has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy a second time, five years after its first filing.

CMX is not alone; other chains face similar financial distress. Regal Cinemas closed all 536 of its U.S. theaters and furloughed 40,000 employees in 2020. Its parent, Cineworld, filed for bankruptcy in 2022 after accumulating nearly $5 billion in debt, seeking to renegotiate leases and secure loans.

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Five BILLION??? Holy Moses.

I knew the theaters were hit hard by Covid, but I personally haven't been to a movie theater in decades; the last three movies I actually watched in a theater were Titanic (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998), and The Passion of the Christ (2004), which gives you some idea of how long it's been. I know for me personally, I would much rather just stream a movie at home from the comfort of my recliner. I can pause it any time I want to take a bathroom break or go get a snack, I can control the volume, and I can rewind to a certain spot if I need to clear up a question of what's going on in the picture.

Plus, I grew disenchanted with theaters; the admission prices were steep, for sure, but the prices they charged for a measly bucket of popcorn were absolutely astronomical; I refused to pay exorbitant prices for a snack. Also at that time, the volume levels in theaters were always set so high that it literally used to hurt my ears....and no way to turn it down. And, of course, you had the rude, stupid people, who talked loudly throughout the film, or engaged in horseplay, or were just plain disagreeable in various ways; nobody seemed to grasp the concept of sitting down and quietly watching the movie. Not having to deal with that was a major factor in driving me out of the theaters. Finally, as my PTSD got worse, I could no longer deal with crowds, especially in tight, confined spaces---and let's face it, those movie theater seats were designed to fit a 13-year-old Japanese boy with severe malnutrition, not a fat 200+ pound middle-aged American. By the time I left the movie, I usually had one whale of a backache from sitting in those seats.

So, I was pretty well finished with movie theaters well before Covid hit; but it's still sort of jarring to think that a theater chain went into five billion dollars' worth of debt because of it.