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Hollywood’s Villain of the Year Is… Adam Aron

AMC Entertainment’s “Ape” C.E.O. was caught with his pants down (once, literally), until a bunch of meme traders gave him an extraordinary lifeline—which he used to benefit himself, mostly.

Adam Aron
Photo: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
Matthew Belloni
December 24, 2021

To best understand the bold daylight heist that has been committed at AMC Entertainment, let’s go back to August 2019. That’s when C.E.O. Adam Aron announced layoffs and a restructuring, even as global box office was headed for a record $42.5 billion year. Investors, along with any semi-coherent person, saw the Netflix revolution as probably a bad thing, long-term, for movie theaters, and that AMC, as the world’s largest chain, would be hit the hardest. The company’s stock floundered. And that was before the pandemic.