Earlier this week, Adam M. Aron, the new president and CEO of AMC Entertainment, caused quite the commotion when he revealed that there was a possibility that the company would begin making some theaters a little more texting friendly. The idea stems from Aron’s plan to appeal to millennials and make movie-going experiences a little better for all of your friends who might as well just glue their phones to their hand.
“When you tell a 22-year-old to turn off their phone, don’t ruin the movie, they hear ‘please cut off your left arm above the ebow,'” Aron said in an interview with Variety. “You can’t tell a 22-year-old to turn off their cellphone. That’s not how they live their life…We need to reshape our product in some concrete ways so that millennials go to movie theaters with the same degree of intensity as baby boomers went to movie theaters throughout their lives.”
As per usual, the social media sphere lit up AMC’s Twitter page in opposition to the idea and even threatened to boycott the theater.
Burn it all down https://t.co/68NMf34XK6
— Alexander Huls (@alxhuls) April 14, 2016
Once AMC realized that everyone freaking out (and not in a good way), the company quickly scrapped the idea.
“With your advice in hand, there will be NO TEXTING ALLOWED in any of the auditoriums at AMC Theatres. Not today, not tomorrow and not in the forseeable future,” Aron wrote in a statement posted on Twitter.
It may have sounded a little counterproductive but, before changing his mind, Aron was planning on splitting up the audiences to make sure that anyone who wouldn’t be able to keep their hands off of their phone could watch their movie in one auditorium, while those who prefer a more traditional theater experience would be in another.
“While we recognize that there is a growing population that is continuously connected to their phones, above all we also remain extremely sensitive that the overwhelming majority of our current audience does not want texting to disrupt their experience,” said Ryan Noonan, AMC’s director of corporate communications, according to Mic. “We would only introduce a concept like this when we are totally confident that we can fully satisfy the desires of our current guests.”