There has been a lot of concern over the past few months about whether movie theatres can survive the COVID-19 shutdown with the world’s biggest theatre chain, AMC Theatres, already having had a bankruptcy scare back in April. At the time, analysts predicted that the company would be out of money by mid-summer and they were reportedly on the verge of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. They seemed to avoid disaster by borrowing another $500 million, but now this week they are warning that their future is still very uncertain. The company has announced an expected net loss between $2.1 and $2.4 billion for Q1 2020 and made a Going Concern filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission:

“We believe we have the cash resources to reopen our theatres and resume our operations this summer or later. If we do not recommence operations within our estimated timeline, we will require additional capital and may also require additional financing if, for example, our operations do not generate the expected revenues or a recurrence of COVID-19 were to cause another suspension of operations. Such additional financing may not be available on favorable terms or at all. Due to these factors, substantial doubt exists about our ability to continue as a going concern for a reasonable period of time.”

Some theatres have slowly started to reopen across the U.S. but there are no major releases planned for the month of June. At the moment, it is unclear if moviegoers will return even once theatres are fully open. Cinemark has announced that they will be trying to bring people back this month with $5 tickets for screenings of classic movies (they also will not require customers to wear masks).

There were rumours a while back that Amazon might be considering an acquisition of AMC but that seems to have died down. Once again, there is a lot riding on Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, which is still currently holding its July 17th release date. Do you think people will feel comfortable enough to return to movie theatres soon or is the situation looking bad for AMC?