Ron Howard: The movie theater industry is ‘not going away’

The future of the movie theater industry may seem bleak in the U.S., as audiences are slow to return to cinemas and blockbuster features get postponed into 2021, but director Ron Howard doesn’t think this 100-year-old business is going away. “I just don’t believe that the theatrical experience is going away entirely,” Howard told CNBC’s Julia Boorstin on “Squawk Alley” Thursday. “We’re seeing it in Europe and Asia. People want to get back out to the movies. You know, it’s still serving a tremendous function.” The majority of theater chains, big and small, have sustained massive losses in the last six months as the pandemic forced theaters to close and prompted studios to reschedule movie releases. With the number of Covid-19 cases still rising , many Americans are still avoiding public indoor spaces. In 2019, the domestic box office reported $11.4 billion in ticket sales, the second-highest haul in industry history. So far in 2020, the U.S. and Canada have only tallied $2.05 billion. At the same point last year, the domestic box office had generated more than $8.4 billion in sales. That’s more than a 75% drop. While more than half of movie theaters in the […]

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