They were a few hundred enthusiasts to brave the cold this Friday morning to find the dark rooms in New York, authorized to reopen after a year of hiatus, but several cinemas remained closed, scalded by the limitations and the absence of blockbuster.
“Netflix is cool, but nothing beats the atmosphere of a cinema”, enthused Thomas Levesque, who came to see Raya and the dragon at the first screening, at 11:00 a.m., at the AMC Empire multiplex, in the Times Square district. More, “my tv isn’t really a huge flat screen thing.”
The governor of New York State, where theaters had previously been authorized to reopen outside the Big Apple, gave the green light for a restart on Friday with a maximum gauge of 25% or 50 people. The theaters of the American cultural capital had been closed since March 17, 2020 following a decree from the mayor, Bill de Blasio.
“So far, 25% looks good to me”, says 28-year-old Thomas Levesque. “But I imagine they will increase the gauge by the summer.”
“I am so happy”, pawed Roy Evans, who was waiting to see “Judas and the Black Messiah” on the big screen. “I had become a larva in front of my TV for a year. (…) It’s not bad to get up a little from your chair.”
British actor Liam Neeson was announced at an Upper West Side cinema to personally welcome and thank New York’s first viewers for his new film The veteran. “It’s a day to mark with a white stone”, he told the magazine The Hollywood Reporter.
The giant AMC, which reopened its 13 theaters in New York on Friday, applied a strict sanitary protocol with room cleaning between each screening and improved ventilation.
“I have two masks, wipes, hydroalcoholic gel. I have everything!”, launches Cindy, sixty years old came to see Raya, who says he does not fear transmission of the coronavirus in cinemas. “I thought there would be a long line, but I imagine people are at work.”
At the Angelika, in Greenwich Village, only a handful of spectators showed up for the first screening of Threatening or Nomadlandshortly after 10 a.m., according to Joel, an employee who refused to give his last name. But nine sessions were already sold out later in the day.
The reopening of the New York market and the prospect of a partial lifting of restrictions in Los Angeles within a few weeks “means that the studios will be able to keep their films on schedule and not offer them directly to streaming”, explained on CNBC, Joseph Masher, president of the New York branch of the American Association of Cinema Owners (NATO).
But with a few rare exceptions, like Godzilla vs Kong at the end of March, no large production is expected before May, with Black Widow, Cruella and Without a sound 2.
“There is not much to eat”, notes Andrew Elgart, who has decided to reopen only one of his three independent theaters in two weeks, on weekends only. The other two will wait until the end of the month.
Several cinemas remained closed on Friday, including the Alamo Drafthouse, whose parent company filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday, or those of the Regal chain, whose more than 500 branches have been closed for four months across the country.
Andrew Elgart says he didn’t do any calculations to determine if the reopening made economic sense. “The numbers don’t mean anything until people come”, he said. “We’re trying to get things going by opening the door. We’ll see.”
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