The Last Picture Show? Moviegoers Cautiously Take a Seat

Even if theaters continue to keep their doors open, prospects for the weeks to come aren’t promising. Hollywood studios have begun delaying the openings of their most imminent releases. Those included potential blockbusters like “A Quiet Place Part II,” the sequel to the hit 2018 horror film; a live-action remake of the Disney animated feature “Mulan”; and “No Time to Die,” the latest entry in the long-running James Bond franchise. Production has been suspended on numerous other projects.

For now, trailers for movies that are still slated for release in the spring and summer look like tantalizing windows onto a simpler, more orderly era. They held other, unexpected resonances, too: before a Friday-night showing of the Vin Diesel action movie “Bloodshot” in South Orange, N.J., a pair of teenage girls laughed uneasily during a preview for the World War II drama “Greyhound,” which features Tom Hanks, who disclosed Wednesday that he had tested positive for coronavirus. (Hanks received the diagnosis in Australia, where he had been working on a biopic about Elvis Presley.)

But when a trailer for “Irresistible,” a political satire written and directed by Jon Stewart, showed a Republican campaign operative licking the face of a Democratic rival, the gag was met with stony silence.

Big chain theaters and art-house cinemas alike implemented their own rules about social distancing. The box office at Film Forum displayed a sign listing coronavirus-related precautions at the theater, which had restricted its seating capacity to 50 percent, in line with government recommendations. A notice in the men’s bathroom advised patrons not to use the middle of three sinks if possible. (On Saturday evening, the theater announced that it would close the following day.)

But a Friday-afternoon showing of “The Passing of the Third Floor Back,” a 1935 feature co-written by Alma Reville, the wife and frequent collaborator of Alfred Hitchcock, was attended by 23 moviegoers, who mostly clustered in the front half of the tunnellike auditorium but were otherwise reasonably spread out.

Lynne Sherman, 71, a semiretired patternmaker, said she had gone to the film because “I just like oddball black-and-white old films.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/movies/coronavirus-movie-theaters.html