AMC ‘ad’ding to post-COV boost

AMC, the world’s largest movie-theater chain, is taking a chance on the small screen with a new ad campaign after the “meme stock” beneficiary finds itself flush with cash.

The multimedia campaign, dubbed “AMC Theatres. We Make Movies Better,” will cost the company more than $25 million and feature Academy Award-winning actress Nicole Kidman. The ads rolled out online and on social media Wednesday, and will air on network TV beginning Sunday.

The move comes after the company weathered last year’s coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, staved off bankruptcy and raised around $1.8 billion in cash. This year, AMC has been a key beneficiary of the meme-stock frenzy, in which amateur traders in Reddit chatrooms bet heavily on stocks like GameStop and others.

AMC’s stock is trading below its high of more than $70 reached in June, but is up 2,200 percent year-to-date.

Armed with cash from the Reddit rally, AMC has inked new movie-theater leases, invested in new payment options like bitcoin, and is looking to increase the variety of its offerings to include sports and pre-recorded concerts.

“As we have said repeatedly of late, thanks to the billions of dollars we have raised this year, AMC is strong and it is time for AMC to play on offense again,” CEO Adam Aron said in a statement Wednesday.

Aron said movie theaters can no longer rely on the past formula of studios promoting films and driving moviegoers into cinemas. Since the pandemic, more Hollywood studios are putting their movies on streaming services, sometimes bypassing theaters altogether.

AMC will no longer depend on “what’s always worked before,” noting that the pandemic has pushed the industry into “uncharted waters,” Aron said.

AMC over the Labor Day holiday saw one of its best weekends since the pandemic began, thanks to Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” which brought in $75.5 million at the box office.

This Labor Day weekend also marked the first time since the beginning of the pandemic that attendance during a weekend in 2021 outpaced attendance from the same weekend in 2019.