Head of the National Association of Theatre Owners Pushes For Save Our Stages to Pass Before January

John Fithian, head of the National Association of Theatre Owners, has issued a warning that, unless Congress passes the Save Our Stages act, concert venues and movie theaters will suffer greatly, Variety reports.

Fithian is pushing for the bill to get passed between November and Biden's inauguration in January. The bill would give grants to concert venues and cinemas, as well as theaters across the country.

Fithian talked about the importance of receiving this lifeline, as well as how much the cinemas industry has suffered due to the health crisis.

"Every one of our members except for the largest four companies would be helped [by Save our Stages]," he said. "The grants cannot be used by big publicly traded companies. The hope is the bigger companies can find liquidity in the markets."

However, he is unsure of the likelihood that it will pass at this time.

"The entire industry is pitching in," he said. "I'm not going to talk publicly about specific conversations, but we have filmmakers, we have senior studio executives, we have a lot of people in the industry that care about the theatrical experience making phone calls and sending emails."

He went on to say that, if Save Our Stages doesn't pass before January, around 70% of the organization's mid and small sized members will either "confront bankruptcy reorganization or the likelihood of going out of business entirely by sometime in January."

"That's assuming we DON'T see a big uptick in business, but on our current trajectory things are looking very bad," he said. "We have to have this happen in the "lame duck." It's that desperate. If that doesn't happen, we'll keep pushing for something in February, but a lot of companies will have gone bankrupt by that point."

Read more on Variety.

The National Association of Theatre Owners is the largest exhibition trade organization in the world, representing over 35,000 movie screens in all 50 states, and additional cinemas in 100 countries worldwide.

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., with a second office in Los Angeles, California, NATO represents its members in the heart of the nation's capital as well as the center of the entertainment industry. From these vantage points, NATO helps exhibition influence federal policy-making and work with movie distributors on all areas of mutual concern, from new technologies to legislation, marketing, and First Amendment issues.

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