Hospitality, Entertainment Venues and Gaming

Movie fans have been trickling back to the cinema after the pandemic upheaval, but the financial pain has intensified for some of the largest theater-industry players, WSJPro Bankruptcy reported. Cineworld Group PLC, the bankrupt owner of Regal Cinemas, said last week that it has terminated its effort to sell the whole business after failing to attract adequate offers and is moving forward with a plan to transfer ownership to its lenders. AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., which had a market capitalization of more than $31 billion at the zenith of its meme-stock hype, is now worth a fraction of that after years of burning cash from operations. And the nation’s largest movie-theater advertisement company, National CineMedia Inc., is on the brink of bankruptcy. Despite the partial rebound in ticket sales from their lows during the worst days of COVID-19 shutdowns, the lingering disruption to film production and growing adoption of streaming services have subjected operators to punishing market conditions as they pin their hopes on a long-awaited recovery. The domestic box office amounted to $7.54 billion in 2022, up substantially from the pandemic trough of $2.28 billion in 2020, according to data from Comscore Inc., a media research and analytics firm. The industry is expected to recover further to roughly $8.5 billion to $9.5 billion in 2023 as the film slate picks back up to pre-Covid levels. But it would still be a far cry from the $11.4 billion of box office in 2019, the last year before the virus hit the U.S., Comscore data show.