While the US theater closures have been quick and somewhat startling for the domestic box office, China has been dealing with COVID-19 (coronavirus) for months already and has seen its cinemas closed since January 23. But according to the IMAX CEO, he expects that the Chinese box office could reopen soon, paving the way for how the rest of the world’s theaters may react to the pandemic.
According to a new interview with THR, the CEO of IMAX, which has half of its screens located in China, opens up about the expected timeline to reopen cinemas in the Middle Kingdom and why it won’t be an instantaneous situation as some are hoping.
“I’m hoping — and a lot of this is subject to biology — that by June things will be somewhat more normal over there,” IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond said.
As of now, with people in China’s film industry and box office business returning to work over the last couple of weeks, as the country’s coronavirus cases begin to plateau, people are expecting that we could see a certain percentage of Chinese cinemas reopening in April, in time for the early May Day celebration from May 1 to May 5. But even then, it’s expected that the locations will be practicing social distancing and restricting occupancy to 50% or so.
And once people begin to go back to work, studios will be able to figure out the best way to schedule the backlog of films that have been sitting around, awaiting censorship approval and release since late-January. Long story short, even when the cinemas reopen, it’ll be a fairly slow, pragmatic process.
“The early stages will see guests in every other seat in every other row,” Gelfond said. “They’ll be coming back in a measured way.”
Regarding the massive amount of closures in the US, Gelfond admits that the news isn’t easy to take, especially financially, but that he’s already been through this for months over in China, so he has an idea of what to expect.
“While that doesn’t make it less painful, it does make it less shocking. I saw this movie in China, and we have more understanding about what’s going on here,” he explained.
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While the total number of infected in the US has yet to reach Chinese levels, the fact that the country has seen its box office cease operations for almost two full months, already, lends credence to the forecast by AMC and Regal that the domestic closures could last as much as 12 weeks.
So, as we speculate how much money the film industry will lose over this time, we can look at China for an example of what to do when the theater doors reopen. And hopefully, things will get back to normal fairly soon.