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| A snack bar in Lotte Cinema / Courtesy of the Korean Theater Association |
By Kwak Yeon-soo
With the summer movie season fast approaching, multiplex operators are calling on the government to allow audiences to eat popcorn in cinemas.
Since the pandemic hit last year, eating snacks and other food items has been banned to ensure that audiences keep face masks on at all times.
The Korean Theater Association, consisting of the three major multiplex operators, CGV, Lotte Cinema and Megabox, asked the government to lift a ban on eating snacks and other food items in cinemas, saying, “The restrictions in place present an insurmountable financial challenge for our members.”
For Korea’s top multiplex chain, CGV, concession sales account for approximately 15 percent of its total gross revenue. The sales of popcorn and other snacks reached 321.3 billion won ($287.5 million) in 2019, but they fell to 88 billion won last year, due to the decline in movie attendance and the ban on cinema snacks in theaters.
“Banning snacks in theaters can give people the perception that theaters are a dangerous place to visit,” a number of theaters said in a joint statement, Thursday. “Food and drink items are part of the movie theater business, and enjoying snacks makes audiences’ movie experience more fun and valuable.”
Multiplex operators argued that audiences should be able to eat food according to the level of the social distancing guidelines, just like in restaurants. According to them, a total of 52 million moviegoers visited theaters between Jan. 28, 2020, when a person who was infected with COVID-19 first visited a cinema, and March 31.
“There were 244 confirmed COVID-19 patients during that same period, but there no cases of any additional infections. Half of the 244 patients visited theaters when snacks and other food items were allowed indoors,” they said, arguing that the virus did not transmit to others while snacks were allowed indoors. “If indoor restaurants can open, what is the difference between those and movie theaters?”
Despite these calls, health experts remained cautious about bringing food back into theaters.
“It’s true that there have not been many confirmed COVID-19 patients in movie theaters. We may discuss changing seat separation guidelines, but it’s still early to allow eating food inside theaters, because the virus can be spread just by laughing,” said Eom Joong-sik, a professor of infectious diseases at Gachon University Gil Medical Center.
Although Korea’s box office sales dropped sharply, by more than 70 percent, last year, as audiences stayed home to watch over-the-top (OTT) media services such as Netflix, local box offices are showing signs of recovery, with “Fast and Furious 9: The Fast Saga” attracting over 1 million viewers in its first week.
It is the first film to achieve such a feat in the 10 months since the two homegrown films, “Peninsula” and “Deliver Us From Evil,” stormed the box office last summer.
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