Round 40 Florida Film Theaters Shutter As Hurricane Helene Nears Landfall

Close to 40 AMC, Cinemark and Regal multiplexes are closed all through Florida because the state braces for Hurricane Helene to hit landfall as a Category 4 with a drive of 130 mph.

Theaters from as far south as Fort Myers, Florida to as far north as Tallahassee, are shuttered. Their tentative re-opening date is tomorrow, Friday Sept. 27. The main movies opening this weekend are DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot and Lionsgate’s Megalopolis.

Hurricane-force winds at 74 mph are anticipated per Weather.com to stretch into Florida’s Panhandle northward into southern and center Georgia tonight, probably as far north because the Atlanta metro space. Downed bushes and energy outages are anticipated to be widespread and can little doubt affect cinema reopenings. Per CNN, there have been greater than 225,000 properties and companies with out energy in Florida. Then there’s the flooding — already Naples, FL downtown is underwater.

One of the more moderen hurricane casualties so far as multiplexes go was Regal’s Hollywood 20 in Naples which was broken throughout Hurricane Irma within the fall of 2017. The cinema was utterly transformed and up to date to what’s primarily one of many chain’s zenith venues within the nation, reopening on April 7, 2019.

Box workplace sources all the time say that Florida theater closures received’t essentially affect the general home market. However, if cinemas are compelled to shut this weekend in Atlanta, GA, which is a high ten market, we may see a shortfall of ticket gross sales. While occasions are getting canceled within the Atlanta space, we’re nonetheless ready to listen to about cinemas closures there. Already, we hear that some colleges within the Atlanta, GA space are being compelled to shut in anticipation of Hurricane Helene. If the storm wounds up being much less extreme than that may very well be good for enterprise.

In current reminiscence, the final time a significant storm slowed the home box office was winter storm Jonas over the weekend of Jan. 22-24, 2016 which deep-freezed from Charlotte, NC upward to New York City. The weekend box office then was down 32% from its earlier body.