Can AMC Theatres CEO Adam Aron ensure a future for the world’s largest movie theater chain?

Here are two scenarios for you to imagine.

One: Decades from now, in a multitude of languages, billions around the world will still be saying “How ‘bout a movie? Let’s go!”

Two: Decades from now, billions will no longer say that. Instead, they’ll continue moviestaying, not moviegoing. They’ll do it on their TVs and laptops and phones, building on the habit that became increasingly popular by the early 21st century. The habit became the rule rather than the exception as the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and 2021 spread and darkened and be-couched us all.

Of the two scenarios, Adam Aron prefers the first. He runs AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest multiplex chain and an unlikely survivor of a pandemic that, as recently as March 3, threw the boutique theater chain Alamo Drafthouse into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Aron’s job is to persuade movie studios and moviegoers to re-embrace the theatrical experience, once things open up again and more of the population has been vaccinated. Now 66, he joined AMC as chairman and CEO in 2015. His previous CEOships include running Norwegian Cruise Line, Vail Resorts, and the 76ers NBA franchise in his native Philadelphia.

The one-time marketing head of both United Airlines and Hyatt Hotels lived in Chicago from 1987 to 1993. Between 1993 and 2009 he commuted between Miami and Chicago and, later, between Colorado and Chicago, until his two children graduated from high school. Aron and his wife still have an apartment just off Michigan Avenue downtown.

Many think his current industry’s headwinds are unsurvivable.

And yet: Between mid-September 2020 and late January 2021, Aron and his colleagues raised $1.8 billion in cash. They renegotiated AMC’s debt (they still carry roughly $6 billion of it). Now, AMC is alive and hoping for a really good bounce-back this summer, full of blockbusters and vaccinated customers. Last week Aron received a $3.75 million bonus for what his company called “extraordinary efforts” amid “continuing and unprecedented difficult business conditions.”

Nearly all of AMC’s recent $1.8 billion cash infusion was raised before, not because of, that weird thing that happened with GameStop and AMC stock in January. The so-called “Reddit Rally” exploded when eager retail investors decided to stick it to the Wall Street traders betting against certain stocks. The investors sent GameStop and AMC stock soaring. And AMC took care of $600 million in debt.

Before that, though, “there was so much speculation in the press and on Wall Street that we would not raise the money we needed to get to the other side of this pandemic,” Aron told me Tuesday by phone from AMC headquarters in Leawood, Kansas. We talked more about how the pandemic unfolded for AMC and, from Aron’s doggedly optimistic perspective, what lies ahead. The following was edited for length and clarity.

Q: Walk me through the year that was, starting with last March.

A: In early February of 2020, AMC was the largest movie theater company in the world. Our business had challenges like all business have had challenges. But we did $5.4 billion in revenue over the course of a year. And literally overnight we shut down. We decided on a Monday in March that’d have to shut all 1,000 (locations) the next day all around the world, because of the pandemic. So we went from a company with almost $500 million in revenue a month, to a company with $0 in revenue a month. That’s quite a change in circumstance.

Q: And then?

A: Next challenge: How do you reopen the theaters? Between June and August 2020 we reopened about 80% of our theaters worldwide, and there’s only one way to do that, and that’s safely and cleanly. We consulted with the best scientific experts around. We formed a partnership with Clorox and hired current and former faculty from Harvard University’s School of Public Health as consultants, to develop safety and cleanliness protocols.

We had in the neighborhood of 10 million people come to our theaters since we reopened (where COVID restrictions allowed) around Labor Day weekend. But that’s a small fraction of what we’d normally do.

There were many who thought during 2020 that moviegoing in theaters would not return in large numbers until the population was vaccinated. In the United States, for example, there have been 75 million injections given, the pace is picking up, and I’d like to think (everyone) who wants a vaccine will be able to get one by June or July. That’s a very encouraging sign for us.

Q: Do you see a sustainable future for AMC, with movie studios tightening the theatrical window — the delay between a film’s theatrical and home streaming release — to, say, 30 or 45 days?

A: Well, you’re making a big assumption in your question. You just jumped to assume that windows are (becoming) shorter. No one more than AMC has been willing to experiment with studios about changing traditional windows practices. We negotiated with Universal during the summer to introduce a 17-day Premium Video on Demand window. Obviously movies going to the home 17 days after opening in theaters is sooner than ever has occurred before. But Universal graciously agreed to share some of that home revenue with AMC, such that we thought we’d do just fine.

We have indicated to every other major studio that we are willing to discuss and negotiate alternate windows policies. If studios make us less profitable because they’re dampening the number of people going to theaters, then we’re not going to be able to pay them as much of the ticket price. They’re going to have to lower their share so that theaters remain robustly profitable, which is in studios’ interest. If theaters aren’t profitable, there won’t be as many theaters. And that’s not good for studios, either.

By contrast, if you consider the proposal that studios just take movies to the home faster and don’t adjust business terms with theaters — that would be problematic for theaters. But it would also be problematic for studios, because theaters globally in the last year pre-pandemic generated $43 billion in ticket sales.

If there’s one thing we learned in this pandemic it’s that as nice as our houses and apartments are, we want to get out of them. People like going to movie theaters. It’s the second-most popular out-of-home experience in the United States, second only to going out to eat. And it’s a pretty cheap date.

Q: Is there a particular job you’ve held that helped you prepare for being head of AMC in the middle of a pandemic?

A: Yes. Norwegian Cruise Line. I was 38 years old. It was a turnaround situation. This was in 1993. We had very little cash, a lot of debt, and a product that needed massive improvement, so I lived every day for three years under the shadow that if we didn’t execute flawlessly we’d have to go into bankruptcy. And I’m happy to report that we did execute flawlessly. We turned the company around, raised a lot of money, improved the product and upgraded the marketing. Fast forward, Norwegian Cruise Line was 10 times the size in 2019 (pre-pandemic) than it was in 1993.

Looking back at the past year of AMC, we were in the same situation. But here we are, a year later. We’re confident about our future.

And we’re looking forward to movies coming out in earnest in May, June, July and August.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

mjphillips@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @phillipstribune

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