Chapter 11 for popular movie chain

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, a fan-favorite movie theater chain with a popular Brooklyn location, filed for bankruptcy protection Wednesday after a devastating year for the business and the industry.

The Austin, Texas-based company, known for its cozy seats and for serving dinner and drinks, said it plans to sell “substantially all its assets” to a group of lenders as part of a Chapter 11 restructuring effort. Company officials said the deal would help save the business after months of closures forced by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“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.

The group of buyers reportedly includes Alamo founder Tim League, who also is executive chairman.

The voluntary bankruptcy petition, filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, also lays out a plan to close some of Alamo’s underperforming theaters in Missouri and Texas.

The company runs about 40 theaters nationwide. In addition to one in downtown Brooklyn, two other Alamo theaters were slated to open last year, on Staten Island and in lower Manhattan, but construction was halted because of the pandemic.

Alamo also announced Wednesday it was closing its location in downtown Austin at The Ritz, a 90-year-old theater. Alamo had opened its location there on Nov. 1, 2007, and “hosted Hollywood legends, welcomed international weirdos as home to SXSW Midnighters, and created countless new film lovers through series like Terror Tuesday, Weird Wednesday, and Master Pancake Theater.”

Besides serving food and drinks before and during a movie, Alamo also has strict rules about keeping quiet and cell phone use in its theaters.