Canceled Events Because of Coronavirus List

Austin, Texas, canceled the 34th-annual South by Southwest festival after tech companies, including Apple, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok, withdrew their participation. The sprawling music, tech and film festival was to run from March 13 to 22, with events planned throughout bars and party spaces across the city, and at a convention center. Festival organizers have said that they did not have insurance to cover cancellation by pandemics or communicable disease, and that they would be laying off a third of their full-time staff.

The Tucson Festival of Books, which was planned for March 14 and 15, was also canceled. The book festival is one of the biggest in the country and usually draws over 100,000 people to Tucson, Ariz. The Los Angeles Times postponed its 25th annual Festival of Books, originally scheduled to take place next month on the University of Southern California campus, until October.

Google canceled its I/O developer event near Palo Alto, Calif., which was scheduled for May. The company usually announces new products and developments at the event.

The organizers of the giant Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which takes place in the picturesque desert of Southern California and is seen as a bellwether for the multibillion-dollar touring industry, were in talks to postpone until the fall, according to a person briefed on the negotiations. Frank Ocean, Travis Scott and Rage Against the Machine are among the acts scheduled to perform. A petition calling for the festival’s cancellation had gathered nearly 19,000 signatures by Tuesday afternoon.

Hollywood has been watching the spread of the virus closely, and expecting a major impact on box office sales. In one of the industry’s first significant responses, the producers of the latest movie in the James Bond franchise, “No Time to Die,” announced they would move its release from April to November.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/article/cancelled-events-coronavirus.html