Big screen champion is retiring as cinemas face uncertain future

The leisure trade’s prime advocate and lobbyist for moviegoing and cinema operators, who has served because the face of theatrical exhibition for years in each Hollywood and Washington, is exiting the stage.

John Fithian, president and chief government of the Nationwide Assn. of Theatre House owners, the commerce group representing nationwide movie show chains and native mom-and-pops, is retiring Could 1, the group stated Monday.

The affiliation, recognized informally and typically confusingly to outsiders as NATO, stated it has begun the seek for a successor.

For greater than 20 years, Fithian served as a tireless fighter for occasionally beleaguered theater homeowners amid durations of dramatic change within the film enterprise.

Throughout his tenure, he helped the trade navigate the transition from movie to digital cinema and defended the so-called theatrical window — the weeks-long time frame separating a film’s big-screen launch from its debut on house video.

Fithian’s retirement comes as theaters are nonetheless attempting to get well from probably the most perilous time in cinema’s historical past, the COVID-19 pandemic, which closed theaters for months, upended Hollywood and threatened the survival of moviegoing as a broadly in style observe for shoppers as status TV and streaming more and more dominated the cultural dialog.

Film studios put movies instantly onto streaming providers and collapsed the theatrical window from a mean of about 90 days to zero. Now studios wait round 30 to 45 days earlier than making their massive films obtainable for house viewing.

Through the pandemic, NATO and Fithian fought in Washington for presidency aid for small theater operators. Nonetheless, some smaller gamers didn’t survive, together with Pacific Theatres and Arclight Cinemas, and the massive chains proceed to battle with the sluggish restoration of field workplace gross sales. Regal proprietor Cineworld Group just lately filed for Chapter 11 chapter within the U.S.

Fithian has been an everyday presence at CinemaCon, NATO’s annual gathering of theater homeowners and film studios in Las Vegas. In press conferences, Fithian may get feisty with reporters who wished to ask questions in regards to the problems with the day — whether or not it was MoviePass, Sean Parker’s Screening Room startup or the rise of Netflix — whereas attempting to spotlight the resilience of the theatrical expertise and the newest field workplace triumphs.

His retirement culminates thirty years with the affiliation, which he first labored with as outdoors counsel in 1992. He grew to become the group’s president in 2000.

“It’s almost unimaginable to sum up a profession of three many years in a couple of sentences,” Fithian stated in a press release. “I’ll go away that to others. However my highest objective was all the time to go away this group and this trade stronger and simpler than I discovered it – and extra importantly – to make sure that it stays sturdy and efficient after I’m gone.”