When you go into a movie theater, it’s not far off from getting on an airplane.
In both cases, you enter a small, enclosed area, and sit shoulder-to-shoulder packed in with a bunch of people you’ve never met.
You sit there, breathing the same air with these strangers, for hours on end. It is a recipe for the spread of COVID or any other airborne virus, so it’s no wonder that most movie theaters had to close down. I am only getting back to work now after being closed down for almost a full year. The movie business is different now, with a much stronger emphasis on air quality and HVAC systems these days. Thanks to COVID, everyone worries about their air quality, because bad air could mean a long and uncomfortable sickness. Even with social distancing, and a lot fewer people in the theater, the HVAC system needs to be functioning at a very high level to keep everything feeling cool and clean. The big thing is that people feel that the air quality is clean. Perception is reality, so even if the air filters are dirty, cranking down the temperature and making people feel cold will trick them into thinking the air quality is better. At my theater I always change out the air filters on a regular basis, because I keep that system blasting to the max all day long. When the place is empty, I turn off the AC to give it a rest. But when customers are present, the AC never stops running for a single minute.