Wednesday is about to be the cinephile’s new favorite day of the week — because AMC Theaters have announced they will be slashing their prices on Wednesdays by half in an effort to get more folks in for a movie during the mid-week slump. Yep, you read that right: by half.
According to a statement from the company via Bloomberg, the all-day discount will be based on the standard adult evening ticket price and will go into effect starting July 9. Perhaps the most exciting element of this discount is that premium showings, such as IMAX or 4DX, will also benefit from the 50% discount, which is a pretty sweet deal knowing how much an IMAX movie can run one moviegoer, let alone a family or group.
Moviegoing has been on shaky ground since the COVID-19 pandemic forced folks to leave the pasttime behind for quite a while, which caused the industry to see a big monetary shock in the lack of ticket sales. Things have slowly progressed upward since then, but it hasn’t been without struggles — and clearly isn’t still fully back to what it was. That said, AMC CEO Adam Aron is seeing the potential.
According to the exec, the first quarter did suffer low box office turn-out, but that issue — which Aron dubbed an “anomaly” — has seemingly “already corrected itself” with the immense performances of both A Minecraft Movie and Sinners.
He claimed that since April 1, ticket sales have been high. Considering how well both of those films have swept at the domestic box office thus far, that isn’t hard to believe. A Minecraft Movie has brought in a whopping $408 million at the time of this writing, while Sinners has $215 million and counting under its belt.
Plus, the summer blockbuster season is just beginning, with Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning and Disney’s live action Lilo and Stitch on the way. Then there’s the new Superman and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, both of which launch in July. That means a lot more potential for the box office, and AMC’s new initiative is sure to help bolster those numbers.
Photo by Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
