CHICAGO — For more than two years, whenever I’ve driven past the Cinemark 18 in Evanston, Illinois, arguably the go-to multiplex for the Far North Side, I have wondered what it looks like inside right now. How quiet it must be. Is the concession stand sticky? Are the seats dusty? Do lobby posters promise a summer movie season the pandemic stopped before it could start? Like other theaters across the country, the Cinemark 18 was crushed; it closed with the initial round of lockdowns, never reopened and finally shuttered for good a year ago. The hopeful news is that AMC just announced it will reopen the theater later this year. But the existential threat remains: How long can movie theaters stay open?
Two years after those stay-at-home orders, we stream now; there’s no going back. And so that trusty old Cinemark 18 plans to reopen as the AMC Evanston 12, with the space formerly occupied by six movie screens developed into something that is not theaters.
I was supposed to be pretending to care about the Oscars on Sunday.
