By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- The return of Tom Cruise to the big screen in one of his most famous roles helped move AMC Entertainment (NYSE:AMC) to nearly double viewing figures at its theaters over the Memorial Day weekend, the company said Tuesday.
AMC, which operates the US’s largest chain of movie theaters, said in a statement that 4 million people visited its US cinemas over the long weekend, while another 1.1 million visited its international locations. That’s effectively double the figure of just under 2.6 million people who visited a year ago when the fear of COVID-19 transmission still ran high and many restrictions on guests were still in place.
Of those 5.1 million, fully two-thirds came to see Top Gun: Maverick, in which, Cruise reprises his role from the 1986 classic as an air force pilot.
The movie pulled in an estimated $156 million in receipts at the box office over the weekend, breaking a 15-year record set by Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.
The success repays the faith of its producers, Shari Redstone’s Paramount, in holding the movie back for the big screen until the fear of the coronavirus had eased. It also contrasts with the downbeat news that has come out of the streaming industry in recent months, which led to sharp falls in stocks such as Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX).
AMC stock, which has been battered by the rising trend in interest rates and its slow progress in generating the kind of turnaround that its army of retail investors had bought into, rose 13% in premarket trading. It had risen 18% on Friday as the scale of the buzz around the movie release became evident, profiting also from a broad relief rally across the market.
The stock has still lost nearly half its value this year and is down some 80% from its peak during the height of the ‘meme stock’ frenzy a year ago.