Halloween Kills topped the weekend box-office in the United States, whilst also being available for streaming online, provided the latest boon for the horde of retail traders hold shares in AMC Entertainment Holdings (NYSE:AMC).
Like Michael Myers – the murderous protagonist in the Halloween movie series, there are now twelve of them – the Cinema industry evidently won’t be killed off.
The latest Halloween movie banked some US$50.4mln of cinema ticket sales in its first weekend, according to Hollywood stats and ratings firm Comscore, beating expectations for US$35-40mln.
Halloween’s cinema release was in parallel with its release on NBC Universal’s Peacock streaming platform. The separate streaming stats are note presently available.
Investors who bought shares in AMC through early 2021 did so, partly, in anticipation of the reopening of cinemas following the pandemic and the resumption of what is set to be a packed release schedule, as around 24 months’ worth of schedule squeezes into the post pandemic calendar.
Industry-watchers have keenly pointed to the dynamic changes in the industry as streaming plays an increased role, with most major Hollywood studios now either opting for either a parallel release to streaming or a significantly shorter buffer between the cinematic and the streaming release date (on average it is now close to 45 days).
In recent weeks, AMC investors have paid close attention to the performance of a number of key titles including the latest James Bond movie No Time To Die, the Venom Carnage Sony (NYSE:SNE)/Marvel collab along with new Marvel movie Shang Chi.
At US$40.74 ahead of Monday’s open, AMC is up around 10% in the past week and some 1,926% for the year to date (driven substantially by its position as a so-called ‘meme-stock’ popularised on the WallStreetBets forum on Reddit.
