In this week’s Faceoff, Cineplex goes head-to-head with AMC as people return to the movies.

For many of us, the thrill of going to a movie theatre was put on an abrupt hold in March 2020 as Cineplex closed its doors. Seventeen months later, it seems that Cineplex is starting to see a return to normalcy.

In its second-quarter 2021 results, Cineplex reported revenue of $65 million, up from $22 million for second quarter 2020.

That rise was driven by its amusement division (Playdium and Rec Room entertainment centres and arcade games), which saw an $18million increase in revenue compared with the same period last year. While the top line almost tripled, the company reported a net loss of $104 million for the quarter, up from its $100-million net loss the prior year.

Louis Gialloreto, an associate professor of marketing at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, says Canadians are using their pandemic-induced savings in two main ways: They’re paying down debt and spending it on cheap thrills.

Gialloreto attributes the success of streaming services to the method of consumption — “people have gotten used to watching entertainment in the living room or the office,” in addition to hand-held devices.

As for the demand for theatres, Gialloreto cited research conducted at the beginning of the pandemic, which showed that only “30 to 35 per cent of people still value the experience of going to a movie theatre.”

This downtrend is further exacerbated by the shrinking exclusive distribution window, which is the period when the movie theatre gets a movie on its own before it gets released through other methods, explained Chris Ling, an assistant professor of marketing at the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University.

“Traditionally, before the pandemic, we were seeing exclusive distribution windows of 75 days to 90 days.”

According to Ling, AMC and movie studio Universal dropped this window to just 17 days last year.