AMC Theatres now offering private theater rentals for $99 due to the financial impact of COVID-19

Sometimes a nightmare is masked as a dream, and no, we're not referring to the 2019 CGI musical disaster Cats, which was more fever dream than dream-dream. What we are referring to is AMC Theatre's new pandemic plan, which involves offering private theaters for rentals for as low as $99. The new offer comes at a time when COVID-19 cases across the country are higher than Dame Judy Dench had to have been to accept her role in Cats.

This week, AMC Entertainment launched its Private Theatre Rental program after a beta launch sparked four times as many inquiries about private theater rentals in the last four weeks than in all of 2019. The program, a proposed solution to reverse the theater chain's grim quarterly loss of more than $905.8 million, is available in any of AMC's 600 screening rooms, Variety reports.

Screening rooms for older releases like 1917, Toy Story 4, and Get Out can be rented for $99 for up to 20 guests, whereas newer releases — of which there are only a few, like Christopher Nolan's Tenet — may cost up to $149. Per normal operational procedures, outside food and beverage are prohibited. In other words, just because you can make a longstanding fantasy of renting out your own movie theater for less than the cost of 20 copies of Cats on DVD come true, it's not a free-for-all, you heathens.

Anyway, AMC will employ its "Safe & Clean" policies and protocol, which includes enforcing mandatory face masks for all patrons, as well as social distancing, and capacity limits.

Under a series of executive orders by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, movie theaters were among the first businesses to shutter in March and were among last to reopen. They were permitted to reopen last month with capacity restrictions allowing just 20 people per 1,000 square feet, with a maximum capacity of 500 total people in the facility.

For more information on AMC's Private Theatre Rental program in Michigan, see amctheatres.com/rentals.

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