AUSTIN, Texas—Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas, a Texas-based dine-in theater chain, said Wednesday that it has filed for bankruptcy due to financial woes during the pandemic.
The company plans to find a buyer during its Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which allows it to continue operating while its managers and advisers work on repaying creditors.
“The transaction will provide the company with much-needed incremental financing to stabilize the business during the pandemic, which has had an unprecedented and outsized impact upon the movie theater and dining industries,” the company said in a statement. “More importantly, it will position Alamo Drafthouse to return to growth and continue executing on its long-term strategic vision.”
In its bankruptcy petition, Alamo Drafthouse listed assets and liabilities of as much as $500 million each. Court papers show that private equity firm Altamont Capital Management owns 40 percent of the company.
Alamo Drafthouse, like many others in the entertainment industry, has been facing a rough year since government lockdowns began forcing many businesses to temporarily close.
The Austin-based company has more than 40 theaters nationwide, including some in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and Kansas City, Missouri. Most of those theaters closed last March but reopened in late summer 2020 with a detailed pandemic protocol plan.
