Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, all in Ohio, Austin, Texas, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania have listed dates in September of this year, but with only 12-24 boats available per location: the showings won’t be as grand as in the European version, and it remains to be seen if a theater chain can recover financially from selling just a handful of tickets. “We may as well just stick with social distancing in our already existing theaters, sell only 25% of the seats and hope for the best”, says the owner of a local chain who asked to remain anonymous. In recent years, cinemas have already faced stiff competition from the rise of streaming, faced corporate acquisitions and now Covid-19, and many were briefly rumored to be bought, as AMC has been rumored to be on the point of being bought by Amazon – although in this particular case it turned out to be just that, a rumor. There are, however, rumblings about theater chains actively pursuing buyers. And as David Craig from the USC Annenberg School notes: “People still want to be social. They don’t go to the movies just for content, they can watch that on here [their smart phones]”, he says. That feeling is a global one.