Is Mid-south going back to the movies?
Area theaters reopening after 3-month hiatus
Inside the multiplex, the auditoriums have been rebuilt at great expense, with motorized reclining seats and state-ofthe-art sound systems.
And yet on the outdoor front wall of the theater, several of the tall glass cases that typically hold full-color advertisements for the latest studio blockbusters are occupied by small blackand-white home-computer printouts of vintage movie posters: Typewriter-paper-sized rectangles advertising “Jaws”
and “Madagascar” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” placed humorously inside the roomy cases, like a child’s foot inside a parent’s shoe.
That’s what you get when a movie theater is back in business, but the studios haven’t provided enough new movies to fill its screens. You get not just such recent releases as “The Invisible Man” and “Trolls World Tour,” but movies from 1975, 1986 and 2005.
And that’s OK.
“We’ve been waiting for this to reopen,” said Susan Shackelford, 66, who in the Before Time went to the movies once a week with her daughter, Halston Shackelford, 30.
Monday, they bought tickets to a matinee showing of “I Still Believe,” a fact-based love story. Said Susan of the mother-daughter moviegoing tradition: “This is our fun escape.”
The Shackelfords were among the first two dozen patrons Monday at the Desoto Cinema Grill in Southaven as Malco Theatres Inc. — the Memphisbased family-owned company that dominates the business of movie exhibition in the Mid-south — began what officials described as a cautious “first phase” in a weeks-long process that theoretically will end with the reopening of all 36 Malco theaters in six states.
The Desoto theater was one of six in the Malco chain to reopen to the public Monday, three months after Malco shut the doors of its theaters in response to health concerns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
The other reopened multiplexes include the 12-screen Olive Branch Cinema Grill; two more theaters in Mississippi (Ridgeland and Tupelo); and one each in Tennessee (Smyrna) and Kentucky (Owensboro).
As a “welcome back” enticement, tickets for all shows for the time being are bargain-priced at $6 each.
Currently, the lineup at the Desoto Cinema Grill consists of eight films: “The Invisible Man,” “Trolls World Tour,” “I Still Believe,” “The High Note,” “Sonic the Hedgehog,” plus the revivals, “Jaws,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” and “Madagascar.” The Olive Branch cinema, meanwhile, is screening six of these titles (the absentees are “Jaws” and “The High Note”).
Monday, attendance at the Desoto
Cinema Grill was sparse but steady as movie diehards, adults with coronavirus cabin fever and parents seeking kidfriendly distractions returned to the multiplex.
“We’re just trying to be really fluid,” said David Tashie, Malco president and chief operating officer. “We’re in six different states, and we’re following different mandates and guidelines at all different levels.”
For example, in Shelby County, movie theaters (the outdoor Summer Quartet Drive-in excepted) aren’t supposed to be back in business until the still-undetermined launch of Phase 3 of the county health department’s reopening plan.
Nevertheless, the Desoto — just off Goodman Road, east of Interstate 55 — and to a lesser extent, the Olive Branch, multiplexes are easily accessible to Memphians.
In any case, for some movie lovers, distance is no deterrent.
Barry Byrd, 58, drove about an hour and a half from his home in Rena Lara,
Mississippi — “I call it a li’l ol’ spot in the road off of Highway 1, south of Clarksdale” — to catch a 1:30 p.m. screening of the new version of “The Invisible Man,” which had been in theaters only two weeks before the shutdown.
He said he routinely drives from Rena Lara to the Malco theaters in Southaven and Oxford.
“I always like to get out and watch movies, the new ones,” he said. “It gets me out of the house and gives me something to do.”
Getting out of the house was also a lure for Charmaine Jacobs, 26, and her kids, Skye, 6, and Zaylen, 5, who came to the Desoto theater to see “Trolls World Tour.”
“I’m a teacher, and we have been in the house so much since the schools closed, we were eager to go to the movies,” said Jacobs, a sixth grade teacher at Horn Lake Middle School.
Tashie said Malco’s plans for modifying operations and renovating many of its theaters coincidentally dovetail with social distancing guidelines.
Prior to the pandemic, the Desoto theater had been upgraded with recliner seats that reduced capacity in most auditoriums by about half. For example, the relatively spacious Auditorium 7 contained 310 old-school seats; it now holds 145 recliner seats.
Even so, Malco — following Desoto County health guidelines — currently is making only 50% of the seats in the Desoto multiplex available, reducing theater capacity to about 750 people.
Malco employees are wearing gloves and masks, and encouraging patrons to purchase tickets on their phones, which can be scanned for “touchless” admission. Social distancing is motivated through methods both simple (footprint decals on the floor) and high-tech (computerized assigned seating).
“We hope that people are excited to get back to the theater,” Tashie said. “We know that it’s going to be a slow rampup, because we know some people are going to be wary of crowds, but we’re going to do everything we can to make people feel comfortable and safe.”