While we try to avoid politics here at thenerdistheword, we couldn’t sit this is one out. While the majority of us can’t wait for movie theatres to re-open, we understand and respect why theatres the world over have been shuttered these past weeks. This scene from 1995’s Outbreak, where a Friday night at the movies turns a little American town into ground zero, proves how a packed theatre can become an incubator for an easily transmitted virus.
So when Governor Brian Kemp announced that Georgia would reopen movie theatres, Tattoo parlours, beauty salons, gyms and bowling alleys (bowling alleys?) on or just before April 27th as the first step to reopen the state, eyebrows everywhere were raised.
While some theatres were hoping they’d be able to open their doors as early as mid-June, the popular consensus has been they probably won’t be welcoming movie-goers back until mid July (health officials permitting). Warner Bros. is gambling on that date since they’ve kept the highly anticipated Christopher Nolan sci-fi flick Tenet in it’s original July 17th release date. And Disney has their fingers crossed that they won’t have to move potential blockbuster Mulan a second time (it was moved from it’s original March 27th date to June 24th when it became apparent theatres the world over were going to be empty for some time).
But rest assured, no matter how bad we or the studios want our movie going lives to return to normal, April 27th is neither safe nor practical. And it probably won’t even happen. Don’t be surprised to see a repeat of what happened in China when the government reopened some theatres in late March. Cinemas were closed again days later after a spike in COVID-19 cases. The middle kingdom’s theatres have remained closed ever since.
Here are five reasons why Georgia’s theatres will remain closed.
The Logistics: Governor Kemp made his announcement a week before he expected movie theatres to re-open (less for other businesses like restaurants and nail salons). How much do you want to bet said bushinesses-theatres included-had little to no warning that they would be expected to re-open in a week? So far Georgia’s entire response to the COVID-19 pandemic feels like it was scribbled on the back of a napkin at Chucky Cheese (Georgia ranks 11th in the U.S for COVID-19 deaths). Even if exhibitors were given a day or two heads up on this decision, it means they’ll be given just over a week to re-open theatres that have been closed for the better part of a month. That doesn’t just mean recalling all their employees (who may not be too eager to return for obvious health reasons), but getting everything prepared for business.
Is the candy that’s been sitting around still good? If so, how will they sell it (how eager will the average customer be to buy a wide open bag of popcorn unaware of how many hands have touched it and where said hands have been)? Will they need new supplies? If that’s the case they’ll need to get their supply chain back up and running, which may mean having product cross state lines. If that chain passes through states still in lockdown, that could present a sizeable hurdle (especially since snacks and confection is where theatres make their profit).
But there’s another problem. While the April 27th date seems recklessly premature, Georgia is at least requiring businesses to adhere to both hygienic and social distancing standards. Which means theatres will have to be cleaned and disinfected from top to bottom, seats will have to be separated or covered and policies will have to be implemented so staff can deal with customers refusing to co-operate (you know there’ll be a few). Opening theatres for business in less than a week during such a challenging health crisis is likely to be more headaches than its worth.
The Lawyers: Americans love to sue people. It’s practically an Olympic sport. President Trump took lots of justifiable flak a few weeks ago for declaring that he takes no responsibility for, well, anything. But the truth is he was just mirroring how many Americans feel; take as little personal responsibility for anything and when bad things happen you sue someone. It’s the American Way. So the question becomes how much legal exposure are movie theatres looking at if a customer or an employee gets sick? You just know that the first calls corporate leadership made following Governor Kemp’s announcement were to their lawyers and insurance providers. And if they can’t get proper personal protective equipment for their staff smack dab in the middle of a pandemic, well getting sued almost seems like a foregone conclusion.
What Will They Show? Even if they can resolve the first two issues, what movies will they show? Just about every summer block buster has been pushed back to the fall or 2021. And the release schedule for the next two years is changing every day. The local movie theatre is open? Great! What are they playing? Oh, nothing? That’ll get the masses out. They could bring back movies like Bloodshot, The Hunt and Emma, films that were released just before the world went dark and all endured anemic openings as a result. But those movies have been available on demand or various streaming services for over a month and none of them are the kind that are going to drive ticket buying crowds into the street.
China was planning on playing older movies to lure people back, but Chinese trademark, copyright and IP laws are vastly different from North American ones. Movies don’t exist in a vacuum in the west, theatres would need permission from a film’s rights holders before throwing it up on the big screen (probably in exchange for a licensing fee). Otherwise they would likely get themselves sued (there are the lawyers again). And would showings of Police Academy 5 or Rush Hour really bring crowds flocking back?
Who Will Go? Mere hours after Georgia announced it was rushing to reopen business doors, online message boards filled up with liberty loving patriots eager to make their own health choices for themselves, unburdened by big government overstepping its bounds and trampling on their God given personal rights. And of course, there were more than a few conspiracy theories tossed in there as well (did you know that COVID-19 is actually an elaborate global hoax engineered by Bill Gates so he can use the vaccine he will inevitably make to implant everyone on the planet with microchips?). You got the feeling that Georgia’s streets would look like Florida’s beaches after their lockdown was lifted.
Except that’s not the case. Despite the protests you’ve probably seen dominating the news lately, the majority of Americans support self-isolation and quarantine measures despite their economic consequences. Around two thirds of Americans are afraid of opening the flood gates too early, preferring caution over haste. Over 51,000 Americans have died in the last six weeks and hundreds more are dying every day. Georgia has been among the hardest hit with nearly 900 deaths so far (for some perspective, that’s roughly half of Canada’s national death toll despite the fact that Georgia has less than a third of Canada’s population).
While you’ll probably see some people running out to get pedicures and haircuts (that’s another rant for another day), the odds that there are a substantial amount of people desperate to spend two hours sitting in a dark movie theatre with a bunch of strangers are much slimmer.
Plus the news has been full of characters who suffered after publicly and flagrantly flaunting the danger of the virus and the necessity of social distancing. Take this bishop from Virginia, who insisted on large church services despite the pleas of health officials. He died two weeks after his finals service. There was this guy, whose obituary appeared in his local newspaper a month to the very day he Tweeted the Coronavirus was all just a political ploy. Odds are most Georgians won’t be beating down the theatre doors to be the next headline in irony.
The Governor’s An Idiot: Narrowly (and controversially) elected in 2018, Brian Kemp is hardly a pillar of popularity. But his stock probably took a further hit at the beginning of April when he claimed that neither he nor anyone in his administration had any idea that COVID-19 could be carried and spread by people who weren’t showing symptoms. It was an admission that left a lot of jaws hanging and prompted others to ask if it was an April Fool’s Day joke. America’s Centre for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, the federal government’s Coronavirus task force and every scientist and health official on the planet had been screaming this at the top of their lungs since January. It was common knowledge to anyone who could read. And yet Kemp claimed the CDC didn’t inform him until April 1st.
There are a couple of possibilities. Either Kemp was lying and he ignored the advice of health officials as long he could. Or he genuinely had no idea, meaning he was disregarding the advice of national health professionals for months. Maybe he thought he knew better until he couldn’t escape the reality that he didn’t. Or he surrounded himself with deliberately ignorant yes-men who blindly agreed with him every step of the way. Each and every one of those scenarios reflect how genuinely stupid he is. Even President Trump, who suggested sick people get injections of Lysol, thinks Kemp is wrong to reopen Georgia so early (maybe).
As does every health official in the country.
The point is Kemp has burned a lot of credibility with people on this matter, even in his own state. The question is how many people will trust his opinion, especially after he resisted calls to close Georgia down for weeks, claiming ignorance as a defence? Many businesses have said thanks but no thanks.
And while Kemp enjoys strong support in rural Georgia, the majority of the theatres he wants open are in big cities, where is support is much less certain. So unless people from small towns are determined to flock to the big city, theatres in Atlanta, Savannah, Augusta and Athens could remain ghost towns.
In reality, if even one or two of these factors come into play, it may prove more practical for theatres to remain closed. And again, it is possible that theatres may re-open right on schedule Monday morning, only to close again shortly after for a combination of health and economic reasons. But rest assured, there’s little possibility that most of Georgia’s movie houses will be open for business come May.
Image via movieweb.com
