AMC Theatres to charge more for best seats; North Fort Myers location exempt

Starting Friday, AMC Theatres will charge moviegoers more for premium seating at select locations. North Fort Myers’ AMC theater will not be among them just yet.

AMC Theatres, the largest theater chain in the U.S., is trying out a new system in which the seats toward the back of a screening room will cost more than those right in front of the big screen.

The system will have three tiers: value, standard and preferred. Less desirable seats like the ones in the very front row will be sold at a discount; value seats will be available only to members of AMC Stubs, the chain’s reward club; and standard seats, which are the most common and will be available at the usual cost of a ticket.

The preferred-sightline seats will cost you more because AMC says it is still suffering from the aftershocks of mass closures during the COVID-19 pandemic; sales plummeted in 2020 and 2021. This is an incentive to get you back into the theater and the company’s bottom line back in the black.

While the seating pricing change will begin in select theaters, AMC expects the system to go nationwide by the end of the year. AMC Merchants Crossing 16, located at 15201 N. Cleveland Ave., won’t be among the select theaters that implement the tiers on Friday. The theater chain has not announced how much the different seat tiers will cost.