AMC STAYS OPEN DESPITE LACK OF NEW RELEASES
‘Dune’ reschedules for October 2021, ‘The Batman’ for March 2022
The 2020 theatrical release calendar is getting even slimmer in the wake of the announcement that Regal cinemas are temporarily closing, although AMC, North America's largest theater chain, says it will remain open.
Warner Bros. said late Monday that its sci-fi pic “Dune” will now open in October 2021, instead of this December. The studio also pushed back “The Batman” to March 2022 and moved up its “Matrix” sequel to December 2021.
AMC Entertainment reiterated its commitment to stay open and cited a slew of upcoming new releases that it will be playing, including this weekend's new films “The War With Grandpa,” with Robert De Niro, and “Yellow Rose.” Roughly 80 percent of its U.S. locations are currently open.
With the recent exit of the next James Bond film, that leaves a mere handful of big films set to still open in 2020: Pixar's “Soul,” on Nov. 20, Universal's “The Croods: A New Age,” on Nov. 25, Disney's “Death on the Nile,” on Dec. 18 and Warner Bros.' “Wonder
Woman 1984,” at Christmas. It's an extra hit to the ailing theatrical industry, which endured six months of closures and has had a difficult time restarting business during the pandemic with key markets like New York
been the responsibility of investor-owned utilities such as SDG&E — purchasing the types of power a community will use. CCAs look to buy greater amounts of clean energy sources such as solar and wind while offering rates equal to or lower than traditional power companies.
According to state rules, SDG&E customers will be automatically enrolled in the new CCA. However, if customers want to remain with SDG&E, they can opt out.
When a CCA is formed, traditional utilities do not go away because they still perform all their other functions such as transmission and distribution of energy, as well as customer billing and services.
It's those customer billing services that led to concern in recent months that SDCP's rollout could be pushed back several months because of a regulatory decision affecting SDG&E. But Hooven said the most recently posted dates look to remain in place.
“We've been reaching out to SDG&E, having conversations with them about our schedule, and they are working with us to try to make that happen,” Hooven said.
SDG&E is in the final stages of a major overhaul to its customer service system that includes billing and also
entails installing new software and unveiling a new website and customer app. SDG&E officials said the $300 million program, called Envision, was on schedule to launch in January.
But in the wake of the economic hardships resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak, the California Public Utilities Commission ordered the state's big power companies to make changes to their systems to reduce electricity cutoffs, provide assistance on debt forgiveness and offer extended payment plans for customers who had problems paying their monthly electric bills.
The extra tasks led SDG&E to push back the Envision program's launch until April of next year — about the same time as the start of operations for SDCP and another CCA in North County called the Clean Energy Alliance.
“We needed time to design, to build and to test all this new functionality,” said SDG&E's chief customer officer, Scott Crider.
The complications are expected to lead to a slight delay of the complete rollout of the Clean Energy Alliance, which anticipates serving about 58,000 customer accounts in Del Mar, Solana Beach and Carlsbad.
Interim CEO Barbara Boswell said the majority of customers will be enrolled in May, just as the CCA had originally anticipated. But customers with more complicated billing arrangements will be folded in the following month.
“It's a small bump in the road,” Boswell said, adding the new CCA has been working well with SDG&E.
“We are coming up with solutions, making sure we can minimize the impacts (on the CCAs) and we've done it collaboratively,” Crider said. “We haven't just walked away and said, ‘Sorry, we can't meet your timeline.'”
As for SDCP, it has hired Bill Carnahan as interim chief executive officer. Carnahan has previously worked at municipal utilities and a CCA in the Los Angeles area. Carnahan's oneyear term will pay him $295,000 — a figure SDCP officials say is consistent with salaries for other municipal, CCA and public power executives in Southern California.
“We are thrilled to have Bill's expertise at this key time in our development,” SDCP board chair and Encinitas City Councilman Joe Mosca said in a statement.
The only CCA in California that will be bigger than SDCP will be Clean Power Alliance in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, which has almost 1 million customer accounts serving about 3 million customers.