From Main Street to the multiplex, cinemas hope to expand again
As a Bethel moviegoer exited a February showing of “Poor Things” depicting the tale of a woman brought back from the dead, “That was a wild one!” escaped her lips with a breathless laugh.
As Jaimie and Frank Lockwood see it, it is the kind of response that only the big screen can draw forth — and what drove them to bring the mothballed Bethel Cinema back to life as Greenwood Features.
At the threshold of their second Academy Awards weekend running a community movie theater, the Lockwoods are quick to admit that their initial stroll down the red carpet of the cinema industry has been a bumpy one, including the 2023 Hollywood strikes that pushed back release dates for some movies they had been counting on to boost ticket sales.
“The past few years have been very hard because we have spent a lot of money in rent, and it has not really balanced out,” Jaimie Lockwood said. “Things are heading in a better direction — and we have also learned a lot. We knew nothing going into this.”
They are not alone. Dealing with the triple whammy of streaming, the COVID-19 pandemic and last year’s Hollywood strikes, the United States lost nearly 2,800 screens on a net basis between 2019 and 2023, dropping the total to about 38,400 as estimated by the National Association of Theatre Owners.
That equates roughly to one screen for every 8,700 people in the United States. But Connecticut has a smaller footprint on the heels of the pandemic. Its 300 screens work out to about one auditorium for every 12,000 residents, if omitting drive-in venues and a few theaters with niche audiences like on college campuses or the Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton.
More screens are coming soon at reincarnated cinemas in Waterbury and New Canaan, and one industry veteran is eyeballing a few more candidate theaters to potentially reopen in southwestern Connecticut. But movie theater attendance remains down by a third from before the pandemic, showcasing the challenges faced by operators large and small.
A step back amid a setback
Harold Blank is the owner of the Shoreline Entertainment Group, a Nahant, Mass.-based company that operates Madison Cinemas and Mystic Luxury Cinemas, as well as the Westbrook Cinemas which it took over last year. Opening in 1912 during a first boom of cinema construction nationally, Madison Cinemas is the oldest operating theater in Connecticut that is screening firstrun movies today, of those listed in the Cinema Treasures log of historic theaters.
“Since the turn of the new year, the industry has taken a step back because of a lack of a good, steady product,” Blank said. “But 2023 was a good year for us in Mystic and a good year in Madison.”
Blank said the current state of the motion picture industry has forced theater owners to tweak the types of movies they show.
“The arthouse movie market has dried up, gone away,” he said, using the industry term that refers to motion pictures that are more artistically driven and less mainstream.
Apple Cinemas has four theaters in Connecticut and is about to open a fifth in the Brass Mill Center mall in Waterbury. Jessica Robitaille, the Walpole, Mass.-chain’s operations manager, said that although “recovery has taken a long time, we are seeing the crowds come back.”
“We’re seeing more interest in niche titles,” she said. “It’s not just major blockbusters people are interested in anymore.”
Robitaille said Apple Cinemas is seeing an increase in the number of movies that build an audience over time, rather than those that do big box office number on their opening weekend and then quickly decline in ticket sales.
The chain is bullish on the Connecticut movie-going market and will add a second theater in Waterbury in April, taking over the shuttered Regal Brass Mill in Brass Mill Center just off Interstate 84. Robitaille said the existing Apple Cinemas Waterbury on Wolcott Street will remain open.
“It gives us an opportunity to take advantage of two different streams of foot traffic,” Robitaille said.
Adding theaters
Apple Cinemas is also making an effort to broaden the types of audiences it has by hosting different events in its theaters. The chain is about to launch live streaming of Metropolitan Opera performances at select locations. Apple Cinemas is also participating in an anime film festival.
Adding accompanying events to draw audiences represent a promising newer initiative for cinemas in the streaming era that is getting traction nationally, according to Brandon Jones, president of the marketing consultancy FilmFrog, based in Dallas.
Jones said the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon of 2023 gave studios and distributors a glimpse on how to capitalize on unexpected promotional opportunities that crop up along the way, to drive more people to their theaters. The 2023 release of “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” was another milestone moment, providing a concertlike experience in the theaters where it was screened including Madison Cinemas.
“The studios put out a ton of great product and gave people a reason to go,” Jones said. “They created a lot of movies that exhibitors were able to create events around.”
Alongside CEO Luke Parker Bowles, Jones is co-founder as well of Cinema Lab, which is on a mission to give new life to shuttered theaters, including the New Canaan Playhouse cinema which is scheduled to reopen this year, with $2 million in support from the state of Connecticut.
“It was very apparent that the soul, if I may be hyperbolic, had been ripped out of smalltown America,” Parker Bowles said. “These literal, center-oftown community places, where people sit in the dark and enjoy something together and have these experiences, had gone.”
AMC Theatres, whose parent company AMC Entertainment is the largest operator in the country, continues to look to get back into expansion mode as well, according to its CEO and a spokesperson. AMC entered this year with nine Connecticut theaters totaling just over 100 screens, including five venues in Stamford, Norwalk and Trumbull it acquired in 2022 from Bow Tie Cinemas.
About 28 million more people went to AMC theaters in the United States last year than in 2022, approaching 170 million patrons. Still, AMC lost nearly $400 million last year despite a 23 percent increase in revenue from 2022, to $4.8 billion. AMC closed the year with about 33,800 employees, 5,000 fewer than it had entering 2020. An AMC spokesperson reiterated plans for new construction in addition to acquisitions and theater enhancements, but did not state any specific plans in Connecticut.
Former Bow Tie executive Joe Masher now runs Scene One Entertainment based in Schenectady, N.Y., which is reopening a theater at the Wilton Mall in Saratoga under its Big Time Movies Cinemas marquee, or BTM for short.
Masher told CT Insider he hopes to expand BTM Cinemas to Connecticut, where Bow Tie long had an office in Ridgefield. He cited Fairfield County as the most likely destination, with empty theaters today including onetime Bow Tie’s one time theater in Wilton; the old State Cinema in Stamford; and Fairfield Cinemas. Also available is the former Bow Tie Criterion Cinemas in New Haven, which AMC did not acquire. A former Bow Tie on Railroad Avenue in Greenwich is being demolished for a new commercial development.
“I’m always interested in Connecticut,” Masher said. “The problem is that Fairfield County is too expensive to build. If someone built a nice entertainment model that had ‘theater plus’ with other things, it would be a huge success.”
Continued evolution
Before the arrival of Greenwood Features two years ago, Connecticut’s newest complex had been the Riverview Cinemas 8 in Southbury, which opened its first screens in time for the debut of “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” in December 2017.
While waiting on the next “tent-pole” releases — the second installment of the “Dune” franchise has had a strong early run — Frank and Jaimie Lockwood continue to brainstorm how to get more people out to the movies. Past ideas have included opening an arcade, bar or cafe at Greenwood Features. Inside their auditoriums, they have already experimented with film festivals, live events and putting major sporting events on the big screen.
“You try things out and see what works,” Frank Lockwood said.
Fritz Staudmyer, chairman of Quinnipiac University’s film, television and media arts program, sees a future in which movie theaters become an even more immersive experience than they already are.
“Theaters are evolving and their success is going to involve their differentiation from the home movie viewing experience,” Staudmyer said. “There are these new 4DX theaters in New York and Los Angeles where not only is going to movies is not only an experience of site and sound, but also of feel and scent. There’s fog machines, there’s mist and rain and the seats move in ways associated with what is on screen.”
But as 4DX spreads, Staudmyer said outfitting “small community theaters is going to be a real challenge.” Outfitting a 200-seat auditorium with 4DX can cost as much as $1 million, according to the Hollywood Reporter and movie patrons will see increases prices as a result of the shift, he said, The showing of a 4DX movie in North Carolina costs more than $20.
Another way for movie theaters to differentiate themselves from the streaming home movie experience is for more theaters to offer luxury services like a full bar and food menu with waiter service. A number of theaters have successfully implemented the concept in Connecticut.
Meanwhile, alternative opportunities for big screen movie experiences are emerging. Since 2017 in Litchfield County, Cindy Heslin and Jeff Palfini have run the Boondocks Film Society, with a rotating slate of venues for screenings and commemorative posters issued for each. Drawing predominantly friends and family at the first two events at the Colonial Theatre in Canaan and a drive-in theater in Amenia, N.Y., the Boondocks Film Society began to get some lift with the wider public with the third try.
For Palfini, however, nothing beats the spectacle of the big screen and boom-box sound of a movie auditorium. If the industry is seeing rapid changes in the age of streaming and other emerging amusements, he believes pigs will fly before any cataclysmic crash of the U.S. cinema industry.
“I think — at least I hope — there will always be people that are going to be drawn to the communal experience of going out and seeing a movie with other people,” Palfini said. “There’s always been change I guess, and maybe now it’s happening fast than ever, but I feel like what’s not going to change is people wanting to connect with other people.”