Uncertainty continues to hover over the film and entertainment industry as the global coronavirus pandemic keeps on disrupting planned releases and reopenings. The latest entertainment player to be affected is AMC Theaters, who has moved its reopening date.
Variety reports that the theater chain has moved its reopening by two weeks to July 30, with the expectation that they will be fully operational by the time August comes. AMC Theaters had initially planned to reopen its theaters by July 15.
As pointed out by Variety, the move is also influenced by the rescheduling of a number of possible blockbusters. Recently, Disney announced that they would be moving the release date for Mulan to Aug. 21. This is the third rescheduling for Mulan, which was initially set to premiere on Mar. 27 before being moved to July 24.
Aside from Mulan, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet was also moved to Aug. 12. It has originally been planned to premiere on July 17.
CNN says AMC Theaters will be reopening 450 theaters on July 30 before having all of its 600 theaters open by the early weeks of August. AMC Theaters have been closed since Mar. 17 because of the global coronavirus pandemic.
The reopenings will also come with health and safety measures that will hopefully stop movie houses from becoming coronavirus hotspots. AMC Theaters had recently announced that theater capacity would be limited to 25 percent. Drinking fountains will also be closed or labeled inoperable, while theater seats will have disposable or washable covers. Face masks will also be required.
The move to late July will also hopefully place AMC Theaters in a better position to showcase the movies that have all been rescheduled to the latter part of the year. For instance, the newest James Bond film No Time To Die is set to premiere on Nov. 20, after initially being planned to premiere on Apr. 10.
Other films looking to premiere in the second half of the year include In the Heights, Top Gun: Maverick, Wonder Woman 1984, Soul, F9, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Raya and the Last Dragon, The Eternals, Black Widow, and Morbius.
These rescheduled premieres, however, will still depend on whether the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic has improved by then. As of the moment, the pandemic does not look to be slowing down at all.
According to the June 29 update from the World Health Organization, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases around the world is now at 10,021,401 people. Deaths caused by COVID-19 are now at 499,913 people.
In the United States, the June 29 update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases at 2,545,250 people. COVID-19 fatalities are at 126,369 people.