There's a catch-22 at play that I can't quite figure out...
Yes, the practical play for theaters is to only sell every three seats or so, and then stagger every other row, where there's never anyone directly behind someone else. Maybe couples are allowed to sit together, but I don't know what you do with families. I'm sure there's a solution, though, albeit an imperfect one.
My bigger questions is this... if theaters are only allowing, say, half capacity, what studio is going to want to release their movies in an environment where the cap on their profits per theater is half what it would have been otherwise? Will studios continue to hold off new releases in that scenario? Or will we see more day-and-date releases (meaning a theatrical and streaming release on the same day), and the studios simply hope that whatever profit they're losing to half-full theaters is made up via streaming?
Granted, even under the best circumstances, not every showing of every movie is sold out. The vast majority of your average theaters/releases are likely only half-full regardless. But either way, again, this day-and-date scenario would only pertain to mid-range movies. In other words, what does Warner Bros. do with something like Wonder Woman 1984 on August 14, if theaters are still under an every-three-seats scenario? I just can't see WB releasing a movie that big into that kind of environment. So do we only get mid-range movies in theaters until we at least have a decent treatment for the virus (never mind a vaccine, as that won't be for another year, at least)?
