AMC Theater chain is spending $600 million to add fully reclining seats.
Between 50 percent to 70 percent of seats in a given movie theater will be removed to make room for the larger chairs.
AMC Entertainment is spending the money to remodel the theaters with larger, fully reclining seats. AMC, is the second largest theater chain will provide “La-Z-Boy type” seats that fully recline in its theaters, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Thew new seats will be 60 inches wide vs. the current 44 inches.
Becuase of the larger seats, 50 to 70 percent of all seats in a theater will have be removed in order to make room for the new seats.
AMC believes that the renovations will cost between $350,000 to $500,000 per theater.
According to AMC, attendance in the theaters that have already been updated has jumped an average of 80 percent, despite having fewer seats, although the exhibitor declined to give any further breakdown.
Changes like this seem pretty necessary. Netflix has been negotiating with production companies to allow Netflix access to movies at the same as movie theaters. According to the MPAA, the number of tickets sold in the United States has declined by 1.5 from 2012 to 2013. To make things worse, movie attendance has not really improved in the last 10 years.
Nowadays, theaters have to do as much as possible to stay relevant. If not, they will end up in the entertainment industry graveyard alongside Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.
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