At a time when movie theaters need butts in seats, why do they care if people come dressed up to see Wicked?
Hollywood needs movies like Wicked to be successful. The year has been chockfull of pretty huge box office duds, with the fact that movies like The Fall Guy, Joker Folie a Deux, Red One and Furiosa are having a hard time, likely sending a chill through the industry. With home theaters suddenly affordable, more and more folks are simply staying home to watch the latest releases once they hit VOD, which is often as little as twenty-one days after they premiere. In a time like this, theaters need to be encouraging folks to come out and see movies if they want to survive.
This very fact is what makes the way theaters are treating Wicked, which is shaping up to be one of the few movies this year audiences are turning out in droves to see, such a head-scratcher. Here on the site, we’ve covered the fact that theatre chains are posting warnings that audience members shouldn’t sing-a-long to the popular Broadway tunes featured in the movie. That feels like an overreach to me, as part of the fun of seeing a movie in theaters is how the audience reacts, but fair enough. A sing-a-long version is reportedly on the way anyhow. They’ve also asked people not to take photos of the screen during the movie with their cellphones. That’s also a fair request, as it’s an annoying new habit that was popularized by the TikTok generation when Oppenheimer was in theaters.
But, in my opinion (and that of a lot of us here at JoBlo), AMC went way too far recently when they asked a woman attending Wicked dressed up as the main character, Elphaba, to remove her green face paint. Sounds crazy, right? Well, it happened, and you can see for yourselves in this embed:
According to TMZ, she was asked to remove the face paint because the chain has a dress code rule that outlaws face coverings (with the exception of COVID masks), which, bizarrely, includes face paint. I don’t know about folks reading this, but if I’m paying north of twenty bucks to see a movie and I want to paint my face green to go see it, I should be allowed.
Some folks are guessing that the reason AMC has this rule in place goes back to the tragic Aurora shooting where, at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, James E. Holmes, whose face and body was completely concealed behind protective gear, committed a mass shooting that left twelve people dead.
With that in mind, I get why chains might be cautious about what people bring into movie theaters, but I fail to see how a young woman painting her face green for Wicked (she was very clearly dressed up as one of the characters from the film) is the same thing. She’s not hurting anyone, and to me it’s actually a good thing people are showing up dressed in-character, because it shows people are finally excited about going back to the movies.
Folks, let’s face it—movie exhibition is in trouble. If they’re going to survive, they have to get with the times. Having more premium theaters with reclining chairs, better food options, and alcohol (YES!) is a good idea. So are the collectible popcorn buckets people are going crazy for. It’s good to see theaters get creative, but making a woman wipe the green paint from her face before seeing Wicked is not a good look for AMC.
What do you think? Was AMC right is having this woman remove her makeup, or were they way off base? Let us know in the comments.
