Cinemark CEO Sean Gamble said Apple and Amazon, two behemoths of the tech world but newcomers to the wide-release movie business, are so far “very pleased” with their results. During a conference call with Wall Street analysts to discuss third-quarter results, the major exhibitor boss said Cinemark’s conversations with the two tech firms indicate they
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Editor’s note: Dade Hayes and Jonathan Bing are co-authors of Open Wide: How Hollywood Box-Office Became a National Obsession. Hayes is Deadline’s Business Editor and Bing is Chief Communications Officer at Vice Media Group. The more things change, the more the Hollywood studios stay the same. At least that’s one of the surprising lessons of
What was it W. B. Yeats wrote, that line Joan Didion lifted and twisted in her essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” about West Coast chaos in 1967? Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. That’s how it felt on Thursday, a few minutes before lunch with some seasoned film executive-friends at the Academy Museum (Salad Niçoise
Widespread optimism months ago that domestic box office might readily return to pre-Covid levels has given way to a new sense of pragmatism about the movie business. This year’s tally will far surpass last year’s $4.5 billion haul, but it will certainly fall billions short of 2019’s $11.4 billion in receipts, and all bets are
“I do think the studies will get paid, like they usually do, whatever they are owed. Because we are the suppliers and that’s usually what happens,” Lionsgate vice chair Michael Burns said Wednesday of the Chapter 11 filing earlier in the day by Regal Cinemas’ parent Cineworld. “Those things seem to go through the same
It’s fascinating to watch local governments—New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans—rush to enact Covid vaccine requirements for entry to the publicly accessible spaces of private business, including, yes, movie theaters. I’m not equipped to judge the ultimate propriety or efficacy of such mandates. Frankly, the complexities posed by breakthrough, uncertain vaccine longevity, variants,
AMC Entertainment CEO and newly anointed chairman Adam Aron is having a moment with shareholders — that army of retail investors he said in June numbered approximately 4.1 million and own more than 80% of the stock. Some of them found it hard to access the company’s annual meeting Thursday, which was held in person
UPDATED: AMC has made it official that it has reached an agreement with Los Angeles real estate titan Rick Caruso for the leases to the 14-screen Grove Theatre in Los Angeles and the 18-screen Americana at Brand Theatre in Glendale, CA, located at their respective outdoor malls. Both multiplexes will reopen next month after being
AMC Boss Adam Aron said he was kicking the tires of Arclight Cinemas’ locations after they went out of business — and he meant it. Word is that the No. 1 exhibitor is close to absorbing the leases for the multiplexes at Caruso Properties’ The Grove in Los Angeles and Americana in Glendale, CA. These
Popcorn and all other concessions will not be sold at the IFC Center, at least for now. But films, actual films, will be projected on all five of its screens for the first time in nearly a year. “The room will be black — you won’t be on your phone!” Kajillionaire director Miranda July marveled
UPDATED with AMC proxy figures, Aron’s 2020 compensation: In one of the few interviews he has granted during AMC Entertainment’s white-knuckle 2021, CEO Adam Aron hailed the reopening of New York City and shared his thoughts on the “Reddit rally.” Speaking with CNBC (watch the full segment above) on Friday, he said advance ticket sales
AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron earned $20.9 million in total compensation last year, double $9.6 million the year before due to a big bonus and stock awards. According to the company’s SEC filing Friday, Aron’s package in 2002 included a base salary of $1.1 million, a bonus of $5 million and stock award of $14.8
As exhibitors get set to report results from the last quarter of their annus horribilis, 2020, one Wall Street bull is predicting record box office in 2023. Eric Wold, a veteran analyst with B. Riley Securities, acknowledged in a note to clients that exhibitors’ efforts to emerge from the abyss of Covid-19 have been hampered
Adam Aron, CEO of AMC Entertainment, said the nation’s largest cinema chain has raised $204 million of the at least $750 million needs to get to the other side of a global pandemic that has crippled moviegoing. AMC raised cash from stock and bonds sales in rounds in April, June, October and most recently in
A word for stocks in 2020: epic — as in monumental, as a bona fide crash in the spring alternated thereafter with convulsions of angst and optimism reflecting a world turned upside down by the first global pandemic in a century. Major indexes from the Dow Jones to the Nasdaq, S&P 500 and Russell 3000
AMC Entertainment filed to sell up to 50 million more shares in an ongoing quest to stay solvent as it outruns the pandemic. The nation’s largest theater chain registered the shares in an SEC filing this morning, adding to the 200 million it previously registered. It said it’s raised $104 million as of December 28
AMC Entertainment Monday unveiled plans to change its board structure in an agreement with majority shareholder Wanda America Entertainment, a division of Dalian Wanda Group of China. Wanda holds nearly 60% of the voting power of financially strapped AMC through ownership of all the company’s super-voting Class B shares. The nation’s largest theater chain said
“There is no way to sugarcoat this for the theater operators,” said one Wall Streeter as exhibition stocks plunged Thursday on WarnerMedia’s bombshell – a reimaging of its entire 2021 release slate that hit an exhibition industry already teetering on the brink. Cinemark shares– up earlier in the session — lost nearly 22% of their
Cineworld, the world’s second largest cinema chain, is looking into a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) in the UK, which would allow it to restructure and renegotiate a mounting debt pile caused by unpaid rents due to ongoing closures. Deadline can confirm that a potential CVA, first reported by the Financial Times, is one option being
Donna Langley, chairman of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, and Ann Sarnoff, chair and CEO of Warner Bros had the same reaction Thursday when asked if their companies had any interest in buying movie theaters. They laughed. “We have no plans to do that currently,” Langley said, appearing with Sarnoff and CBS CEO George Cheeks on
Imax Corp. has decided to furlough 150 workers due to the withdrawal of movie studios from the theatrical marketplace due to COVID-19. The large-format film company’s auditoriums have fared well in China and across Asia in reopening during COVID-19, but it has reached a crossroads in much of the rest of the world. Just about
Last week, just before the President’s diagnosis consumed us, Hollywood leaders joined in asking that Congress send coronavirus relief funds to exhibitors. Those were described as a life-and-death issue for theaters. A mortal threat. And who can doubt it? If the White House isn’t safe, movie houses are certainly still a question mark. But the
AMC Entertainment said Monday it’s agreed to sell its nine theaters in the Baltic region (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) to UP Invest for €65 million (about $77 million) as it continues to shore up its balance sheet. The move follows a capital raise and debt restructuring in July to bolster liquidity and strengthen its balance
AMC Entertainment announced Monday it’s officially concluded a complex, and controversial, restructuring of approximately $2.6 billion of its debt that included an exchange and fresh capital raise. The news came as iyd new distribution deal with Universal Pictures continues to roil the industry. Holders of more than 87% of senior subordinated notes participated in an
Cinemark CEO Mark Zoradi said the chain is in “active discussions” with Universal over windows but choses to do it privately instead of entering “the media fray” that exploded when AMC Entertainment threatened not to show Universal films. “I know that Universal is committed to the theatrical business” for big films like Jurassic World 3:
Canadian largest exhibition chain Cineplex on Monday said it is working toward reopening six theaters in Alberta on June 26, the first step in a plan to “reopen as many of its locations as it can” on July 3. Cineplex has 165 cinemas and 1,695 screens, which accounts for about 75% of the country’s market
Giant exhibitor AMC Entertainment said net losses swelled to $2.18 billion, including a giant $1.8 billion in non-cash impairment charges, for the first quarter of the year from a negative $130 million the year before in what CEO Adam Aron called “unprecedented times.” Revenue dropped 22% to $941 million from $1.2 billion for the three
Cinemark Holdings, the nation’s third-largest exhibitor, will delay reporting its financials for the quarter ended in March. It said in an SEC filing Friday that it plans to report by June 11. The company said it was impossible to get the numbers and paperwork ready in time given the enormous disruption to its business caused
April proxy season, which just ended, is an annual rite that lifts the curtain on CEO salaries for the previous year ahead of shareholder meetings in May and June. For 2019, big entertainment companies are showcasing habitually hefty paydays even as millions of Americans lose their jobs each week and the business sees huge pandemic-related
Deadline has confirmed that Lionsgate has put re-structuring in effect largely in its film marketing and distribution departments, laying off a company-wide number in the high teens according to a source familiar with the matter. I understand this was in the works for some time, and is in no way related to the great COVID-19