Movies return Friday to Orpheum with ‘Cast Away’
Movies return Friday to the Orpheum with a 7 p.m. screening of “Cast Away,” the 2000 Tom Hanks adventure about a stranded Fedex systems analyst that was partly filmed in Memphis.
The screening will be the first seated public event in the venue since the theater closed March 14 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Orpheum President and CEO Brett Batterson said ticket sales would be limited to less than a fourth of the theater’s 2,500 seats. “Because the Orpheum is such a large venue, we are able to open up 22% of our total capacity and still provide a comfortable, socially distanced moviegoing experience,” he said.
The event comes at a tentative yet relatively hopeful time for public entertainment venues, which are trying to reconnect with the public after months of pandemic-motivated closure.
“Cast Away” screens the same night that Malco is reopening five of its more popular Memphis-area multiplexes: The Paradiso, the Powerhouse, the Studio on the Square, the Ridgeway and the Desoto. Most of the reopened auditoriums will be devoted to the Aug. 28 launch of “The New Mutants,” the latest film inspired by the Marvel Comics series, “Uncanny X-men,” and its spinoffs.
Meanwhile, the Orpheum recently invited the public to return to the theater by creating an onstage nine-hole miniature golf course, an innovation that is intended to be a fun way for the theater to raise a bit of money to help make up for the $2 million revenue shortfall caused by shutdown.
Until the streak was snapped by the coronavirus, “classic” movies had screened every summer (and sometimes beyond) for close to 20 years at the Orpheum. Batterson said “watching movies” is a “beloved” part of the Orpheum’s programming, “so I am happy that we are able to offer screenings once again.”
So far, two movies are on the Orpheum schedule, the first being “Cast Away,” directed by Robert Zemeckis (”Back to the Future,” “Forrest Gump”), which earned Hanks a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his role as a Memphisbased Fedex employee trapped on a South Pacific island after a plane crash. Although most of the film was shot in the Fiji islands, production — including Hanks and co-star Helen Hunt — spent two weeks in Memphis, at Fedex, at the Memphis Cook Convention Center (where a set representing the interior of a house was built), and on Devon Way (not far from Galloway Golf Course) for exterior neighborhood shots.
The next movie is set for Sept. 11: “Harlem Nights,” a 1989 gangster comedy-drama set in 1930s New York and directed by its star, Eddie Murphy.
Both screenings start at 7 p.m., with doors opening at 6 p.m. Tickets are $8 and $6 for children 12 and younger. Seating is general admission. “Buying in advance is encouraged due to limited capacity,” according to the Orpheum website, which adds: “Face coverings must be worn at all times and social distancing will be enforced.”