Malco’s bargain Bartlett theater to reopen Friday
Bargain-priced movie tickets return to the Memphis market Friday when Malco’s Bartlett Cinema reopens for the first time since the original pandemic shutdowns of March 2020.
The theater will operate seven days a week, and ticket prices will be $7 per adult and $5 per child (12 and under). In comparison, an adult ticket to a regular evening show at a typical Malco theater costs about $14.
Six of the theater’s 10 auditoriums will open Friday. The movies will include “The Addams Family 2,” “Black Widow,” “Candyman,” “Free Guy,” “Halwe’re loween Kills” and “Jungle Cruise.”
The reopening of the shopping-center multiplex at 2809 Bartlett Blvd. means that 13 of the 14 Memphis-area cinemas operated by Malco Theatres Inc. prior to the pandemic are back in business.
The 14th, the Malco Majestic in Hickory Hill, was sold in late spring to a group that plans to develop the property into a production studio and eventrental space.
Founded in 1915, Memphis-based Malco is the region’s dominant movie exhibition company, with close to 40 theaters in six Southern states. “We aren’t in the business to lose money,” said Malco co-chairman Jimmy Tashie. “If a theater’s borderline (profitable), not going to reopen it.”
Touted when it opened on Aug. 4, 1989, as the “Memphis Area’s Largest Theatre,” with “State of the Art Dolby Surround Stereo,” a “THX Auditorium,” and a movie lineup that included “When Harry Met Sally” and “Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan,” the Bartlett eventually became a “secondrun” cinema, making movies nearing the ends of their theatrical runs available at reduced admission prices.
Tashie said the Bartlett is a way “to appeal to families, to give them a way to see movies on the cheap, any day of the week.” (Most Malco theaters offer halfprice admission on Tuesdays.)
He said the theater had been “spruced up” with a new lobby and bathroom facilities, but the COVID-19 pandemic shut the cinema down before many people had the opportunity to see the improvements.
Tashie admitted that the traditional concept of a “second-run” movie house has become blurry in the streaming era, with so many movies available for home viewing simultaneously with or soon after their theatrical debuts.
Even so, business most recent weekends has been down only about 10% to 20% from the PRE-COVID days, he said. He credited the upswing to the week-after-week debuts of such anticipated films as “No Time to Die,” “Dune” and “The Eternals” — a trend that should continue with this week’s “Ghostbusters: Afterlife.”