Movie theaters are desperate to get consumers away from streaming services and back in front of the big screen, and AMC believes one way to do that is by accepting new payment methods, including Bitcoin.
As Yahoo! Finance reports, AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron held an earnings call yesterday where he informed attendees that the movie theater chain would start accepting Apple Pay and Google Pay. However, he also stated AMC is going to be “technologically equipped” to accept Bitcoin as a payment method for movie tickets and concessions soon. It’s unclear how that will be implemented but apparently it’s going to happen this year.
Aron also confirmed in response to questions on the call that AMC will not be investing in drive-ins as they are a bad business, that film production is simply too expensive, and there’s no plans for consumer products, but they aren’t being ruled out completely.
Of more interest to actual moviegoers is news via Deadline that AMC is opening 10 new locations, eight of which are former Arclight venues. The specific locations haven’t been revealed yet, but Aron confirmed three locations in Los Angeles, two in Chicago, and one in Atlanta either have leases or a letter of intent signed. Those are in addition to The Grove in L.A. and Americana in Glendale.
It’s also being reported by Deadline that AMC has secured a 45-day theatrical window for all Warner Bros. releases in 2022. The pandemic saw a number of streaming deals struck that allowed for same day releases for home viewing, and theater chains clearly don’t want that to continue as we slowly return back to normal and people start going outside again.
