AMC will reopen more than 100 of its theaters next week, and to lure otherwise wary moviegoers to its cinemas, it’s offering promotional ticket pricing of just 15 cents. You’ll still have to cough up for new releases, though.
The one-day, 15-cent ticket pricing will be available at the “first wave” of AMC’s reopened theaters on August 20, the company said Thursday. AMC would have you believe that its essentially free tickets to the movies celebrate its century in the cinema business (its first theater opened in 1920).
But by AMC’s own admission, AMC is in deep shit right now amid covid-19 closures and a mess of production and movie release delays. Reopening without some kind of cornball gimmick would have been a death sentence. While the whole 15 cent ticket prices thing is only being offered for one day, the chain will thereafter offer $5 tickets for fan favorites like Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Black Panther, and The Empire Strikes Back.
AMC said it expects to reopen two-thirds of its 600-plus theaters in the U.S. by September 3 for the premiere of Tenet, the great theater experiment of 2020. New Mutants, meanwhile, will debut on August 28. For these and other new releases, you will still have to pay normal admission prices. Thinking better of its previous harebrained approach to mask-wearing, the company said guest and staff safety protocols mandate masks, though presumably this will not be enforced when people are in their seats with their snacks and surrounded by dozens of maskless strangers.
I desperately miss the movies and have been waiting for literal years to see New Mutants, but even I plan to wait for it to hit Disney+. Though I hope to god Disney doesn’t try to charge me $30 for it.