AMC is closing more theaters: List of doomed cinema locations will grow in 2026 as meme stock craze sputters

AMC, the world’s largest movie theater chain and a one-time darling of meme stock traders, said this week that it expects to continue closing more movie theaters than it opens going forward.

While the move is sure to disappoint cinephiles, AMC believes that shuttering certain cinemas will ultimately be better for the company’s bottom line. Here’s what you need to know about the upcoming AMC theater closings.

What’s happened?

On Monday, AMC Entertainment Holdings reported its fourth-quarter 2025 financial results as well as its full-year 2025 results. It’s fair to say the company did not have a blockbuster quarter or year.

For the company’s Q4 2025, which ended on December 31, AMC reported total revenue of $1.28 billion. That’s a drop of 1.4% from the $1.3 billion the company reported for the same quarter a year earlier.

Fewer people are attending movies

AMC said that both its global and international attendance figures were down.

For Q4 2025, AMC’s total attendance equalled 56.3 million. That’s a drop of nearly 10% from the 62 million during the same period a year earlier. U.S. attendance was down less (about 7.5%) for the quarter than international attendance (down about 15%).

However, for its full fiscal 2025, AMC did slightly better.

Total full-year revenue was actually up about 4.6% to $4.84 billion. And its attendance figures, while still down across the board, didn’t fall as much as it did in the forth quarter.

Still, the downward trend in attendance was obviously a blow to AMC, which relies on attracting foot traffic to its theaters so it can sell tickets and high-margin concessions.

Attendance problems are not unique to the company. In recent years, movie theaters worldwide have struggled with declining foot traffic.

The reasons most often cited for those declines include higher ticket prices, fewer films with mass-market appeal, and increasing competition from streaming services like Netflix, which stream original feature film content right into viewers’ homes.

Declining foot traffic can turn some theater locations into a financial burden instead of a guranteed positive revenue source, so it was little surprise when, in addition to annoucning its financials, AMC revealed that in the years ahead it is planning to close more theaters than it opens.

AMC reveals it will close more theaters than it opens

AMC currently has about 860 theaters across the globe, making it the largest theater chain in the world.

Yet on the company’s financial earnings call earlier this week, CFO Sean Goodman revealed that AMC will be closing “underperforming locations” in the future—something the chain has already been doing for some time.

The CFO further revealed that since 2020, AMC had already closed 213 locations, while opening just 65 new ones during the same timeframe.

Which AMC movie theaters are closing?

The company did not provide a list of theaters that it plans to close, but local media outlets have reported numerous closures in their respective communities over the last year. AMC location closures in 2025 have included:

• An Alabama location in March
• A Kansas location in April
• A Georgia location in August
• Three Illinois locations in August
• A Colorado location in September
• A Buffalo, New York, location in December

“The ongoing reshaping of our footprint reflects our commitment to improve asset productivity, expand margins, and position AMC for sustainable long-term growth,” Goodman said on the company’s financial call, according to a PitchBook transcript.

When asked about the company’s portfolio footprint by an analyst, Goodman said that about 10% of the chain’s theaters come up for lease renewal each year, and those renewals give AMC the opportunity to renegotiate leases or shutter the locations.

“Like most organizations or companies with a retail footprint, our theaters are a kind of normal distribution and there is a tale of underperforming or loss-making theaters,” he said. “And we see an opportunity to close those theaters or renegotiate leases and then take on new theaters that are significantly, very significantly, more profitable.”

He added that investors can expect a similar pace going forward and that the company will be “closing more theaters than we open, but the new ones that we open are generating significantly more profit than the ones that we close.”

AMC stock price has been getting hammered

Since announcing its latest quarterly results on Monday, shares of AMC Entertainment (NYSE: AMC) have been relatively flat.

The stock price currently sits at around $1.16 a share in premarket trading as of the time of this writing.

That’s only a fraction of what the company’s shares were once worth during its heyday as a meme-stock darling in the early pandemic years. During that time, meme stock traders on Reddit poured money into buying AMC shares, driving the price to almost $650 per share in June of 2021.

Today’s share price of around $1.16 represents a more than 99% decline from AMC’s nearly $650 high.

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