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Dearborn’s (Mich.) Henry Ford Village (HFV) is operating with a business-as-usual approach while a chapter 11 filing works its way through the courts, the Press and Guide reported. First announced in late October, the retirement community is taking the action to reorganize its finances and to build a stronger future, officials said. According to a release from HFV, the legal process will help them improve their debt structure and other financial burdens, and grant the flexibility needed to make capital improvements. Under chapter 11, HFV can continue day-to-day operations while working toward the financial goals laid out in the filing.

The Tillary Hotel, which sits at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn, became the latest victim of New York City’s ravaged hospitality industry, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The owner of the 12-story building that houses the hotel, as well as residential apartments, filed for chapter 11 protection on Friday after tourism and revenue vanished and it missed payments to lenders. In September, the operator of the historic Martinique hotel, one of Manhattan’s oldest, filed for chapter 11 hoping for relief from rent payments and union obligations as the COVID-19 pandemic hammers the city’s lodging market. The Tillary Hotel occupies six stories out of a 12-story building that also houses residential apartments. Only five of its 64 residential units are currently occupied, according to papers filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, N.Y., by the hotel owner, 85 Flatbush RHO Mezz LLC.

Movie theater operator AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. said today that it would issue shares to investment firm Mudrick Capital Management LP for a $100 million investment as it looks to prop up its finances to stave off a possible bankruptcy, Reuters reported. AMC said it would need at least $750 million of additional liquidity to fund its cash requirements through next year. The company estimated its cash and cash equivalents amounted to about $320 million at Nov. 30, and in the absence of additional liquidity it anticipates its existing cash resources will be depleted during January next year.

AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., the world’s largest movie theater chain, has launched efforts to sell more than $700 million worth of stock while warning that failing to raise enough liquidity might force the company into bankruptcy, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The equity sale could help AMC avoid a debt default, if the company can generate enough dollars to last it until widespread vaccination against COVID-19 helps bring moviegoers back into theaters, AMC Chief Executive Adam Aron said yesterday. If AMC can’t obtain the liquidity needed to stay afloat until movie attendance gets back to normal, the company would likely need to restructure its balance sheet, potentially causing a “total loss” of stockholders’ investment, according to a securities filing Thursday. Equity ranks below debt in priority and often gets wiped out in a bankruptcy restructuring. AMC is aiming to sell up to 200 million shares, or more than $700 million, based on the $3.58 stock price yesterday. The company previously proposed stock sales in September and November, filing two separate shelf registrations to sell 30 million and 20 million shares, respectively. Despite reopening the bulk of the company’s more than 1,000 cinemas world-wide, AMC is burning cash as capacity restrictions limit movie attendance and major Hollywood theaters delay big-ticket flicks or, increasingly, send them straight to streaming. AT&T Inc.’s Warner Bros. studio pushed back the release of “Wonder Woman 1984” until Christmas, while MGM Holdings Inc. has delayed the release of “No Time to Die,” a James Bond film, to April 2021.

Walt Disney Co. said on Wednesday that it would lay off about 32,000 workers, primarily at its theme parks, an increase from the 28,000 it announced in September, as the company struggles with limited customers due to the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reported. The layoffs will be in the first half of fiscal 2021, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. A spokesman for Disney confirmed that the latest figures include the 28,000 layoffs announced earlier. Earlier this month, Disney said it was furloughing additional workers from its theme park in Southern California due to uncertainty over when the state would allow parks to reopen.

Walt Disney Co. said on Wednesday that it would lay off about 32,000 workers, primarily at its theme parks, an increase from the 28,000 it announced in September, as the company struggles with limited customers due to the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reported. The layoffs will be in the first half of fiscal 2021, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. A spokesman for Disney confirmed that the latest figures include the 28,000 layoffs announced earlier. Earlier this month, Disney said it was furloughing additional workers from its theme park in Southern California due to uncertainty over when the state would allow parks to reopen.

Canada’s Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group said yesterday that it had emerged from bankruptcy, after the COVID-19 pandemic forced the famed circus operator to cancel shows and lay off artists earlier this year, Reuters reported. The once high-flying Cirque, which grew from a troupe of street performers in the 1980s to a company with global reach, has slashed about 95 percent of its workforce and suspended shows due to the pandemic. It had filed for bankruptcy protection in June and reached a new purchase agreement with secured lenders shortly after. A group of creditors, led by Catalyst Capital Group, had bid to take control of the Montreal-based circus group in July, replacing a deal with Cirque shareholders that included debt financing from a Quebec government body. As a part of the deal with its creditors, Cirque said it would add the former chief executive officer of MGM Resorts Jim Murren and Gabriel de Alba, a partner at Catalyst Capital Group, to its board.

Recent coronavirus case spikes, new lockdowns and the expectation of minimal family outings during the holidays has turned a year of bad news for the country’s cinemas into an outlook that’s simply bleak, Bloomberg News reported. In early October, when Regal Cinemas shuttered all 500-plus locations nationwide, that darkened more than 7,000 screens alone. The industry has already seen a cinema cull in the U.S., per the National Association of Theatre Owners, with the number of movie theaters shrinking from around 7,200 in 1996 to roughly 5,500 as of late 2019. But that may just be a preview. John Fithian, head of the National Association of Theatre Owners, told Variety that unless Congress passes the Save Our Stages Act, a bipartisan push to support concert venues and theaters that have seen their businesses decimated by Covid, “probably around 70% of our mid- and small-sized members will either confront bankruptcy reorganization or the likelihood of going out of business entirely by sometime in January.” In past economic downturns, theater owners tried stunts like “dish nights” — giving away different pieces of a table setting, such as a saucer or salad plate, to lure Great Depression patrons. That probably won’t work this time, leaving a lot of moviegoing real estate in need of a reboot. There’s a long tradition of adaptive reuse when it comes to the older generation of neighborhood moviehouses, many of which died off in the second half of the 20th century as new suburban multiplexes appeared. These smaller facilities often see a second life as community theaters, churches, gyms and bookstores. But modern multiplexes can be poor candidates for adaptive reuse, theater owners and real-estate experts told the Wall Street Journal, because of their sloped floors and subdivided spaces. That’s especially true at a time when the malls they are often attached to are struggling reinvent themselves. Closed theaters may fare better on the real estate market as available land in need of a demolition; a shuttered Regal Theater in North Charleston, S.C., for example, was simply demolished, with plans to build an apartment building in its place. Some developers do see sequel potential in modern movie theaters, though. Last year, PMB, a development firm focused on the medical field, turned a 1980’s multiplex in Goodyear, Arizona, into a collection of medical offices. And Walter Crutchfield, co-founder and partner of the Arizona development firm Vintage Partners, turned a Flagstaff movie theater into perhaps the country’s most creative department of motor vehicles.

Regal Entertainment Group owner Cineworld Group PLC is in talks with investors for financial lifelines after months of empty theaters in the U.S. and U.K. during the coronavirus pandemic, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. One proposal under consideration would supply rescue financing to help Cineworld avoid filing for protection from creditors. Under an alternate proposal, investors would provide a loan to finance an insolvency proceeding, the British equivalent of bankruptcy. The Financial Times had earlier reported that Cineworld was considering a filing under Britain’s equivalent of chapter 11. Based in the U.K., Cineworld is the second-largest movie-theater operator on a global basis as well as in the U.S., after AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. Cineworld didn’t respond to requests for comment. Cineworld last month closed all of its more than 500 U.S. locations after reopening in August. The company also suspended operations at its 127 locations in the U.K. The company had said in September it had commenced discussions with its lenders and had taken actions to improve its liquidity. The company also reported that revenue for the first half of 2020 was down 67 percent, to $712 million. Cineworld has over $4 billion of total debt, as well as more than $4 billion of lease obligations.