Georgia Movie Theaters Will Reopen on April 27
Movie theaters all over the country are closed right now because of the coronavirus. Even if you wanted to go see a movie, you couldn’t (unless you live near a drive-in). But if you could go right now, with the looming threat of coronavirus, would you? Would you potentially die to see a movie on the big screen?
Folks in Georgia will be among the first to answer that question, as the state’s governor, Brian Kemp, announced today that movie theaters will be among the businesses permitted to reopen in the state a week from today, on Monday, April 27.
Theaters that reopen, Kemp said, would still be “subject to the specific social distancing and sanitation mandates” — meaning they would have to limit their attendance to ensure customers could be appropriately spaced out in auditoriums. With nearly every movie scheduled for release in April, May, and June postponed, it’s not entirely clear yet what movies these theaters would show.
Nobody misses movie theaters more than me (see below), but I personally would not set foot in a movie theater right now. China was the first country to deal with coronavirus, and the first to get their infections under control; but after briefly reopening their theaters in late March, they almost immediately reversed course and closed them all again. The word as recently as last week was larger theater chains were hoping to be back up and running by the end of the summer; Cinemark told investors it wanted to be open around July 1 with the goal of getting back into the swing of things by the time Mulan and Tenet are ready to premiere (supposedly) later that month.
That seemed optimistic to me at the time — and here is Georgia telling its theaters they can reopen two full months before that. We’ll see whether audiences agree.
Gallery — 15 Things We Miss Most About Movie Theaters: