Heather Morgan

I was working in organizational consulting with a company called Service Management Group. I was consulting for an number of clients across restaurant, retail and entertainment spaces. As it happened, AMC Theatres was assigned to my portfolio. After consulting for them for a year, they invited me to work exclusively for them and thus began my theatrical exhibition journey.

There are so many moments that I’ve deeply loved. The two that are featured most prominently in my mind are the Will Rogers Pioneer of the Year Dinners when I co-hosted with Erik Lomis and we honored Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, then the following year when we honored Erik after he passed. That dinner always hooks my heart because it’s an industry full of people coming together to raise money that allows us to support our members, but it was the beautiful and tortured poetry of those two dinners specifically that make them so special for me. Erik was front and center at the first dinner, dressed in black tie and bringing our event back to life with a flourish after several years of a Covid-induced hiatus. It was a beautiful and joyous night that I felt deeply honored to be part of. Then, one short year later, we were on that same stage without Erik, honoring his life and his legacy. Once again, it was a beautiful and joyous night, this time tinged with a deep sense of loss, that I felt deeply honored to be part of. The moments that squeeze my heart the hardest will always be the moments that live forever in my memory.

I have so, so, so many wonderful moviegoing experience. If I had to choose a favorite, I would probably go all the way back to graduate school. I met two fellow classmates there who became sisters to me. We spend countless hours together studying, talking, partying and bonding over (what else) movies and television. To no surprise, we had all watched and loved the Sex and the City television series, just like every other high school and college girl in the late ’90s and early 2000’s. So, when the Sex and the City movie came out in 2008, we were ready! We got dressed up, went to dinner, drank Manhattans, then went to the theater and LOVED the movie!! We laughed and cried and I remember thinking at the time, this is exactly how I wanted this night to feel. We had all loved the TV series, but watching it never felt special because we were on our couches each week and we didn’t have each other. Going to see the movie in a theater took something we each loved separately and gave us a chance to celebrate it together. That’s why this industry does what it does and means what it means to people.

As the saying goes, “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” In 2020, very dark times fell upon us. We, as people and as an industry, have been struggling to make our way back in the five years that have followed. Those years have been long and they’ve tested our collective mettle beyond measure. I feel that we are on the cusp of a turning point. In the years to come, society is going to find a renewed desire for connection with one another rather than the isolation we’ve had. Studios are going to renew their commitment to theatrical and realize its full value to their IP and their revenue streams. We are all going to realize that to not only survive but thrive into the future, we need to think strategically, we need to understand our guests and their needs, we going to work collaboratively as an industry to deliberately forge the future we want. The night has been very dark, but our next dawn will be blindingly bright and I couldn’t be more excited for it.

It’s true what they say, this really is a relationship business. The better you are at communicating with people, collaborating with people and caring about people, the more successful you’ll be.