AMC and Zoom will bring work meetings to the big screen

It’s rare that you attend a work meeting on Zoom and wish you could hear your co-workers mutter “Sounds good” in state-of-the-art audio, or see your boss on a 50-foot screen. Regardless, AMC is joining forces with Zoom to enable that experience.

It’s not exactly the Smith & Wesson reunion, but AMC and Zoom are converting a handful of movie theaters into cinematic video conferencing spaces, to be known as Zoom Rooms.

Businesses will be able to book multiple auditoriums across the country for a three-hour block to virtually hold their event, and workers will have access to food and beverage offerings (for an additional cost), which is why their laptops can get so sticky. like the floor. .

Of course, they’ll also get to watch a movie, if they manage to do so after a co-worker talks too much at the end of the meeting after not saying anything the whole time.

“Now, through this Zoom and AMC partnership, we have the best of both worlds: Zoom’s spectacular communications platform combined with the comfort, size, scale, and state-of-the-art picture and sound capabilities of theaters. located in the center of AMC,” said Adam Aron, president and CEO of AMC Theatres.

“This creates a whole new product in major US cities for businesses and meeting planners.”

While the two companies are pitching the partnership as a means of connecting disparate workers, the elephant in the theater is that theaters tend to be pretty empty during the day, except for people playing hooky at work.

Now instead of showing scary 2 to three people, AMC can make money off the empty theater and show a work meeting instead (also to three people). That’s something.

It remains to be seen how companies and workers fare. Are employees really looking for a fully immersive work meeting experience that’s harder to walk away from? Because one can imagine a disgruntled worker getting irritated at the sight of his boss 50 feet from him and throwing a sledgehammer across the screen like that old Apple Macintosh ad.

Maybe the giant popcorn and drinks and the chance of a movie afterward will cut through that tension. But instead of a crowd of people with phones, they’ll also have laptops. AMC better make a new version of that “Silence is golden” admonition.

Source: AMC Theaters