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Coming soon to a theater near you: company Zoom meetings

Matt Levin Nov 8, 2022
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AMC is set to partner with Zoom to stream company meetings in movie theaters next year. Getty Images

Coming soon to a theater near you: company Zoom meetings

Matt Levin Nov 8, 2022
Heard on:
AMC is set to partner with Zoom to stream company meetings in movie theaters next year. Getty Images
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COPY

Because what you want — and don’t even know it — is to attend a company meeting via the big screen, AMC and Zoom are making it happen. 

The movie theater chain and meeting technology company are getting together to offer ginormous teleconferences for remote workforces, complete with popcorn and Jujubes. 

Starting sometime next year, companies will be able to book movie theaters in 17 major markets for Zoom meetings. 

But … why?  

Movie theaters are doing better than last year. Partly because last year was so bad, and partly because “Top Gun: Maverick.” But there are worrying signs that theaters’ bread and butter — superhero movies — may be getting stale. 

“We have seen sort of a dwindling of interest in some of the cinematic universes, ‘Thor: Love and Thunder,’ ‘Doctor Strange,'” said John Poelking with the market research firm Mintel. 

The quarterly all-staff meeting won’t ever make as much money as “Black Panther,” but it could help theaters diversify revenue streams.

And it is possible that renting a theater will make for better Zooms, said Melanie Brucks at Columbia Business School. 

“You’re obviously less likely to check your email, you’re less likely to kind of go off and daydream about something else because you’re in space that’s meant to really be an entire experience,” she said.

Brucks does worry, though, about how awful Zoom glitches will look on the big screen. 

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