Mexico City Reopens Movie Theaters to Sparse Crowds

After a four-month shutdown due to coronavirus epidemic, some few brave men entered cinema theaters in Mexico City this week.

Yes, there was popcorn. But movie goers had to wear face masks, and could only lift them to eat or drink. And their temperatures were checked at the entrance. They also had to walk on a sanitizing mat.

However, theaters in the capital have been allowed to open at only 30% of capacity — entire rows were blocked off with yellow tape — but even so there was no competition for the best seats.

At an IMAX screen in Mexico City, only about 10 customers showed up Wednesday, but technical problems with a projector put off the scheduled screening of the 2014 space drama “Interstellar.”

Antonio Alamillo, 47, a bakery manager, and Nélida Cartujano, 42, a teacher, came to see the 1955 James Dean classic “Rebel Without a Cause.”

“I was here on the last day the theaters were open and here I am on the first day they opened again,” said Alamillo. “I can’t live without the cinema.”

Before the pandemic situation movie theaters in Mexico sold about 350 million tickets, making Mexico the fourth largest movie market in the world, after China, India and the United States. In terms of revenues, Mexico was in ninth place, with ticket sales worth about $850 million in 2019. The country has relatively low ticket prices.

But the movie theater business chamber, Canacine, estimates Mexican movie houses lost about 152 million ticket sales during the shutdown, which lasted from March 25 to August 10. At least a dozen movie theaters across the country have announced they will close permanently.

Mexico’s Culture Secretary, Alejandra Frausto, was at one of the first showings at Mexico City’s Cineteca Nacional complex.

“A moment like this, returning to the movies, seemed impossible,” Frausto said. “But that is precisely what art does, make the impossible possible.”

Mexico passed the half-million mark in coronavirus cases on Thursday. The Health Department reported 7,371 newly confirmed cases, bringing the total so far to 505,751. The department reported 627 more confirmed COVID-19 deaths, bringing the country’s accumulated total to 55,293 deaths.