The movie industry got a huge shot in the arm recently (and no, not the COVID-19 vaccine), when movie theaters in New York reopened on March 5th. Of course, these reopenings will come with restrictions, as, according to Deadline, theaters will “be allowed to reopen at 25% capacity with no more than 50 people per screen, masks, social distancing, and other protocols.” Furthermore, “air filtration and purification standards previously specified by the Department of Health” will be instituted.
This is a huge announcement as far as the movie theater industry is concerned, as most New York movie theaters have been closed almost a year ago. Ever since the start of the pandemic, many movie theater owners have called out Governor Andrew Cuomo for not allowing them to reopen when other markets had allowed theaters to reopen their doors as early as August of last year.
Not all movie theaters have reopened, however.Not everybody is on-board with the reopening plan. According to an article from the New York Post, smaller theaters that are owned independently claim that the plan to reopen “favors big theater chains that can afford the cost, such as AMC and Showcase, but hurts their small businesses.”
On top of that, the announcement came as an out-of-nowhere surprise to many of the smaller theater owners, who say that “they weren’t given enough notice to prepare and that the 25-percent capacity limit is too restrictive to make money.” Some theaters “have yet to set a reopening date,” such as Cinepolis in Chelsea and Film at Lincoln Center.
For those looking for a movie to see when these theaters do reopen, some new releases for the week of March 5 include Raya and the Last Dragon (also available on Disney Plus), Boogie, and Chaos Walking. And, if you want to stick to streaming services, along with Raya, the sequel to the 1988 Eddie Murphy hit, Coming to America, was released on Amazon Prime Video this week, and Moxie and Boss Level released on Netflix and Hulu, respectively.
