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The Dome is a special unique place and Pacific Theatres, in its latter-day diminished form, has its own unique set of circumstances, but the announced demise of the Arclight/Pacific chain isn’t the sort of thing that happens in an industry that’s firing on all cylinders. It isn’t what happens in an industry that’s been through a rough patch but is about to snap back big, either.
If you wanted to turn this week’s special circumstances into a trend piece, you wouldn’t have to squint too hard to pair the Arclight Affair with the looming Oscar Implosion and see this as the week when Film as We Knew It began its farewell tour, letting friends and family know it’s always loved them and getting its affairs in order before the summons to the great beyond.
The Dome and The Oscars might be two fairly elderly totems of entertainment but that they should both be in dire circumstances says something about where filmdom is right now and how deep the reservoir of goodwill is that awaits its return.
There is this looming sense that the film industry is sleepwalking towards a cliff right now, having used our one-year break to convince itself that COVID was the only thing wrong with the state of film, and all we had to do was sit tight and wait for the snapback.
No doubt there will be an initial rush back to the theaters. But once the thrill of being out of the house again wears off, things are what they are. The signs, omens, and portents, such as we have them, are dire. Let’s have a look:
I’m not so convinced that the wailing and rending of garments over the fate of The Dome—and the Arclight chain—isn’t a manufactured panic designed to prod recalcitrant landlords into some rent forgiveness.
There’s the weirdly passive negative wording of their statement. “Pacific will not be reopening its ArcLight Cinemas and Pacific Theatres locations.” It doesn’t say that the locations will be closing, just that they won’t be reopening. But not reopening is a conditional state—”at this time” being implied.
The next phrase also hints at the conditionality, while attempting to sound absolute:
Despite a huge effort that exhausted all potential options, the company does not have a viable way forward.
All possible options is to say, all options that are possible today. If something else became possible—like say, a forgiveness of back rent—then a viable way forward could suddenly open.
What the statement leaves out is any plan to sell off the company or dismantle the locations, declare bankruptcy, or anything else. So they are “not reopening.” But doing what?
If you’re Rick Caruso, and this gauntlet has been thrown down, what are you going to do about it? Have a big shutdown eyesore in the center of your malls just while you’re trying to lure people back in? Wait two years for the company to come out of bankruptcy and some hedge fund to take it over and run a stripped-down, no-frills version of the chain in the middle of your destination shopping experience? Or wave away a bit of back rent and call it even?
As the news broke, Twitter erupted, with all our venerable trade reporters putting on their fan fiction hats and nominating their favorite deus ex machina’s to buy the Dome, Quentin Tarantino and Netflix being the leading nominees. Followed by The Academy, which is misunderstanding several situations all at once if anyone thinks AMPAS is sitting on a pot of gold all ready to take shopping right now.
The demands that Netflix buy The Arclight really shows where thinking about the film industry is: praying that The Service, which has run exhibition into the ground, take over the pillars of film history and operate them as charities just about sums up the state of things.
This is not the kind of thinking that happens around sectors in full bloom and health.
Or to take another case study, AMC’s CEO said this week that the company’s stock is “under attack” from short sellers—another thing you don’t generally see in a sector brimming with vitality.
The problem here isn’t COVID. That is going to, in whatever fits and starts and hopefully sooner rather than later, surrender its seat as the sole force dictating public entertainment choices.
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