Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Saturday that movie theaters will be allowed to reopen in New York on October 23.
Well, New York State, that is, which certainly represents a vast area with a large population, but does not include the five boroughs of New York City, home to an estimated 8.3 million people.
If you forget which are the five boroughs of New York City, here is Stacy Keach to remind you.
There are parameters to the new policy. Only 25 percent capacity is allowed, with a cap at 50 people per auditorium. Masks will be required (except when people are eating and drinking), assigned seating is mandatory, social distancing between parties will be enforced, and theaters must meet benchmarks for air filtration, ventilation and purification standards.
Another condition set by the Governor states that additional staffing will be required to control occupancy, traffic and seating to ensure compliance, which could possibly further eat into a bottom line of a struggling theater.
Furthermore, theaters outside New York City can only qualify if they are in counties with less than two percent on a 14-day average and do not have any cluster zones.
As such, Rockland and Orange counties, which are near the City, are two of the dozen counties that can not reopen theaters. The densely populated counties of Nassau and Suffolk on Long Island and the country club-riddled Westchester County are in the clear, as are the cities of Buffalo, Rochester, Albany, and Syracuse.
Cuomo’s announcement comes a week after several theater managers used their highly visible marquees to question the Governor’s decision-making. At the Regal E-Walk on the heavily trafficked corner of West 42nd Street and 8th Avenue Manhattan, the digital display read “48 states have reopened theaters safely Why not New York, Governor Cuomo? #ReopenOurCinemasNY”
Cineworld CEO Mooky Greidinger cited Cuomo’s “inflexibility” as a key factor in his decision to close operations.
As the industry continues to monitor developments with unease, Disney, the revenue leader by a significant margin, recently announced a structural reorganization with puts an emphasis on streaming.
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