Bob Iger on Wednesday reiterated that the movie theater business likely will never return to pre-pandemic levels.
But that doesn’t mean movie theaters are a “dead business,” he said. It’s just “smaller.”
The former Disney CEO in a conversation with Kara Swisher at the Code Conference explained that theaters suffered a “permanent scar” that was exacerbated by the COVID pandemic.
“Consumers have learned as they got more comfortable with the user interface and the subscription and basically app-based television, they’ve learned to find it, find shows that they like and they’ve learned to enjoy them. They love the flexibility it gives them from a time perspective,” Iger said.