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One Theater Owner's Optimism Stands Out In A Sea Of Market Turmoil
Two women talk to each other while awaiting the beginning of a movie in 2021.
(
Emanuele Cremaschi
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Getty Images
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Topline:
A Midwest theater chain owner still holds out hope for the future of the movie business.
What’s the problem? The summer season, a time when blockbuster tentpoles are normally surefire successes at the box office, has become somewhat of a nightmare, with Furiosa and The Fall Guy vastly underperforming prior films that kicked off the summer. That has many questioning whether theatrical is still a viable business.
Enter Greg Marcus: Marcus Theatres CEO Greg Marcus operates about 100 locations in the Midwest through his company. Though he worries about what streaming and a reduced genre offering has done to movie theaters, he still fervently believes in people’s demand for seeing movies in theaters, as evidenced by last summer’s Barbenheimer phenomenon, among other successes.
Who can fix it: Marcus asserts that the impetus lies in the theaters themselves and the studios to draw audiences out to the cinemas. “If dinner is the tentpole, and midsize dramas and comedies are breakfast or brunch, I’m not going to survive off just breakfast or just dinner. I need the full meal. What we’re looking at now is what happens when they only give us dinner tentpoles.”
For more ... read the full story on The Ankler.
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