COMMODORE IN CONTROL
The restaurant is also Hampton Roads’ only place to catch a movie
As Virginia’s latest COVID-19 reopening phase launches, one industry hasn’t rushed to reopen its doors.
For movie theaters, it’s a chicken-or-egg situation. Most large chains and independent theaters don’t want to reopen without at least one new, bigname summer movie to advertise. On the other side, movie studios don’t want to roll out a big movie if theaters won’t open or can’t, as in New York, Los Angeles and some other major markets where coronavirus restrictions are tight.
Naro Expanded Cinema in Norfolk’s Ghent neighborhood has never relied on big summer blockbusters. The single-screen theater focuses on independent and art films, but even independent studios have been holding back new product.
Co-owners Thom Vourlas and Tench Phillips were thinking of opening as a test during July Fourth weekend and hoped to show the classic “Jaws.” Around the country, though, there have been surges in the virus, and Vourlas isn’t entirely convinced it won’t happen here.
So, the co-owners scrapped their plans.
“Let’s just wait and see what shakes out in the coming weeks, months or, God forbid, years,” Vourlas said.
He doesn’t want to re-open and then have to close later.
When the nation’s largest theater chain, AMC, reopens, it plans to restrict seating to every other row and encourage movie-goers to leave at least one seat between themselves and the next person not in their party.
The Regal theater chain plans to use electrostatic fogger cleaners in auditoriums between movies, will require two open seats between parties and will reduce the amount of lingering in the lobby.
The same spacing is expected at Cinema Café, where the theaters also will offer reservations, according to information on its site. That chain had originally eyed July 10 and July 17 to open most of its Hampton Roads locations, but now that outlook is “to be determined.”
Vourlas wonders though about how it will all work in reality. Will moviegoers wear their masks until they get inside theaters and then pull them down to munch on popcorn and sip on sodas? For those not eating, will they wear them for the entire length of a two-hour movie? What if you hear someone behind you sneeze?
It’s among the many reasons they’ve chosen not to reopen the Naro yet.
For now, they’ve been relying on fans to stream movies through a program that gives independent theaters like the Naro a cut of the revenue. While a normal month at the theater might bring in $40,000 to the box office, the virtual cinema experience, so far, might bring in $1,000 if they’re lucky, Vourlas said. They’ve also been selling popcorn at the movie theater’s entrance for three months, but they’ve seen that slow, too, perhaps as the weather has gotten warmer and the novelty has worn off.
“We are not going anywhere, though. The landlord is working with us,” he said. The movie theater’s long-term lease doesn’t run out until next summer. Vourlas seemed hopeful another would be signed, but said “we need to see some kind of light at the end of the tunnel.”
One of the most anticipated movies of the summer, Christopher Nolan’s spy thriller “Tenet,” has pushed back its release date three times, and is now set to open Aug. 12. Disney’s live-action “Mulan,” originally primed for debut on March 27, has been pushed to Aug. 21. That leaves Russell Crowe’s “Unhinged,” from new studio Solstice, in place to be the first wide-release premier on July 31. It was moved from July 10.
The only place, so far, to catch a movie on a big screen in Hampton Roads has been at The Commodore in Portsmouth by virtue of its other line of work, being a fullservice sit-down restaurant.
Fred Schoenfeld, the theater’s longtime owner, has been showing big releases he wasn’t able to screen when they premiered.
Over the years, he said, “we’ve had to turn away more good movies than I could play.” Through July 2, he’s showing “The Greatest Showman” starring Hugh Jackman. Next up is “Just Mercy,” starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx, based on the life of a black attorney in Alabama defending a death row inmate in the late 1980s, a December release that has been available on streaming sites including for free from the studio in June.
“The big problem is, there’s no new movies out,” Schoenfeld said. He said he’s lucky if he gets 20 people for a showing in a theater that has about 500 seats. That’s naturally helped with keeping distances inside. His tables already were spaced at least 6 feet apart, and they sell every other table. The theater tries to make sure people wear their masks until they’re seated. His staff wears masks, too.
“Now we have streaming, we have pay per view. We have all these opportunities for films to be presented in homes,” he said. “Now, every movie that we are playing, that we have played in the last three weeks, has been available online” or on television, he said of The Commodore’s throwback lineup.
He emphasized that the experience of seeing a movie inside a theater can’t be replicated at home.
“If we are left to die on the vine, there’s nothing that comes close to what we offer.”
Phoenix Theatres Entertainment, which owns the Main Gate 10 inside the Naval Station Norfolk, planned to reopen its movie theaters July 10, but “we slammed the brakes on that,” said President and CEO Phil Zacheretti after studios pushed back the release dates of their new movies.
He said the theater may reopen July 31 for the premier of Russell Crowe’s “Unhinged,” but “Tenet” from Christopher Nolan is “the one that really makes a difference.”