(KNSI) – A movie theater company headquartered in Waite Park says the industry would have been decimated if help wasn’t available.
Cinema Entertainment Corporation owns 19 movie theaters in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin. To company got $10 million from the Shuttered Venue Operator Grant, part of $15 billion set aside for small entertainment companies and venues in the federal COVID relief bill passed in December of 2020.
CEC Theatres Company Vice President Tony Tillemans says the relief package kept many companies in the business.
“I think that a number of companies in our industry would have gone bankrupt. I mean, our industry would have been decimated. We would have struggled. We probably would have made it through. But, what would our industry have been like coming out? Because a lot of theaters would have gone bankrupt.”
After CEC Theatres was forced to close in April of 2020, the company lost 90% of its business due to the pandemic. Tillemans says CEC Theaters kept its managers and salaried employees but laid off its hourly workers to make ends meet.
“There’s still a lot of costs to owning a business. You got to pay your property taxes. You still got to pay your insurance. You still got to pay your mortgage, if you don’t own it, or you still have to pay rent. So, it’s still just a lot of costs that go on, even if you’re closed.”
Tillemans says there’s still some reluctance to return to the movies, and revenues are still 70% of what 2019 sales were, but he’s optimistic about the industry’s future.
Tillemans says while some streaming services started releasing movies online at the same time as movie theaters, they’ve indicated they’ll end that practice in 2022. Instead, he expects movies will stay in the theaters for less time. Probably around 45 to 60 days instead of the standard 90 days.
The Shuttered Venue Operator Grants were awarded based on 2019 revenue numbers and could receive up to 45% of revenue with a cap of $10 million.
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