Cocktail bars. Loyalty programs. Motion-enabled chairs that shake and spray scents. Even pickleball and bowling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Amid a national drop in moviegoing<\/a>, these are just some ways movie theaters have tried to bring audiences back.\u00a0<\/p>\n But turns out what’s working is the old-school<\/em> movie experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n Amid increasing consolidation of the entertainment industry and the resulting homogenization of franchise-hungry Hollywood, people are looking for the imperfection of analog film, the niche movie they can\u2019t find online, surefire classics they\u2019ve never seen on the big screen and the kind of intimate, communal, neighborhood-centric<\/span> (and often less expensive) experience that smaller theaters can bring.<\/p>\n Tiny arthouse cinemas in Seattle and around the country are faring well in what online publication IndieWire recently declared the \u201cgolden age of microcinemas<\/a>.\u201d In the era of streaming and scrolling, nostalgia seems to be winning people back. Even the larger independent theaters are drawing audiences with this somewhat counterintuitive approach to programming.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMovie theaters as we’ve known them for the past century will not continue in the way they have been,\u201d said Shawna Kidman, an associate professor of communication at UC San Diego.\u00a0<\/p>\n First, a disclaimer. Don\u2019t let the tiny bright spots fool you: Things are looking quite bleak for most movie theaters. Theater chains around the country have shuttered locations. On Tuesday, dine-in movie chain IPIC Theaters notified state officials it would close its Redmond location<\/a> and lay off 64 workers after filing for bankruptcy last month.<\/p>\n Independently owned theaters haven\u2019t been spared either: Nonprofits like SIFF and the Pacific Science Center have recently closed<\/a> or sold theaters.<\/a><\/p>\n The closure of the Varsity Theater earlier this year<\/a> drew the curtain on the University District\u2019s era as a cinema hub. And with just 13 operating today, Seattle\u2019s tally of independently owned cinemas stands at its lowest in at least 25 years, down from its peak of 21 in 2012, according to a Seattle Times count.<\/p>\n A handful of those could be considered \u201cmicrotheaters,\u201d but most are larger, three- or four-screen cinemas owned and operated as local businesses or nonprofits.\u00a0<\/p>\n This mirrors a nationwide trend: Loosely defined as tiny arthouse cinemas, microcinemas are just a tiny subset of the estimated 3,000 independent theaters scattered across North America.\u00a0<\/p>\n Most independent theaters have a business model that relies at least in part on mainstream, \u201cfirst-run\u201d movies, like \u201cZootopia 2\u201d or \u201cWicked.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Which means these theaters, much like multiplexes, are stuck with the blockbuster-or-bust cycle of Hollywood \u2014 and an audience that is kind of over it<\/em>.<\/p>\n Microcinemas literally offer an alternative. And that\u2019s precisely why they\u2019re having a moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n On a recent Wednesday night, three dozen people gathered in front of an unassuming, two-story building on Rainier Avenue South. Rows of string lights and a neon beer sign in the window cast them in a warm, cinematic glow.\u00a0<\/p>\n Among those waiting to enter The Beacon Cinema, a small, independent theater, were four friends who had no clue what they were about to see.\u00a0<\/p>\n All they knew was that a) tickets were free and b) it would likely be something pretty weird. Among the things they\u2019d seen here before: an ’80s movie made in Hong Kong about an evil vase and a 4K rerelease of the landmark anime movie \u201cAngel’s Egg.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Most didn\u2019t regularly go to the movies, they said, but added that because The Beacon\u2019s programming was unique, it was worth seeing in person.<\/p>\n \u201cI would prefer to watch it from my couch if it’s a big-budget movie,\u201d Gawain French-Byrne said. \u201cThere’s just not a reason to go to the theater if it’s going to come to my TV in six months.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The doors opened. Beacon co-owner and founder Tommy Swenson stood at the entrance with a tally counter. Twenty minutes before showtime, the theater was more than three-quarters full.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Beacon has found success with indie movies, deep cuts, hard-to-stream films and other fun programming, as well as a recently launched membership program, Swenson said. (While Secret Cinema events offer free entrance, most of those nights\u2019 revenue comes from concessions.)\u00a0<\/p>\n The theater is cozy and small; with only 48 seats, 20 attendees can make a screening financially viable (as long as other shows continue to sell out).\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe’ve thought at various points about looking for a larger space, and we’ve always just pumped the brakes on it because it would have to fundamentally change how we’re calculating things,\u201d Swenson said. \u201cLike: If we get 20 people in here, that’s OK, that works. But if we have a 500-seat venue, that’s a disaster.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Swenson is not the only one making these calculations. Across the country, tiny alt movie houses have opened up in recent years, like the volunteer-run, 60-seat Hyperreal Film Club in Austin, Texas; the 30-seat Spectacle in Brooklyn; and 40-seat Babylon Kino in Columbia, S.C.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Grand Illusion, the small University District theater that lost its lease last year, saw its best years ever in the two years prior to its closure, Executive Director Brian Alter said, thanks to 35mm screenings and distinctive programming. The theater is looking for a new location and is operating as a pop-up at SIFF and Capitol Hill\u2019s Northwest Film Forum.<\/p>\n The Film Forum, which has two screens and seats a total of 156, has also been \u201cdoing well,\u201d said newly minted Executive Director Jill Louise Busby.\u00a0<\/p>\n While the organization faced layoffs in 2024<\/a>, the Forum has maintained financial stability by operating with a leaner structure and increased grant funding, Busby said. Attendance at the Forum grew 62% from 2024 to 2025, and 2026 attendance is already tracking about 22% higher than the same period last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n She attributes the jump to a few things, including the Forum’s director of exhibition, Cole Wilder, who implemented a new balance of programming that includes largely mission-aligned social justice films with lighter entertainment like \u201cThe SpongeBob SquarePants Movie\u201d (2004), documentaries and cult classics \u2014 many of which can\u2019t be easily streamed \u2014 as well as increased partnerships with organizations and its surrounding neighborhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are ready to come back, but you have to give them a reason to be there,\u201d Busby said. \u201cAs opposed to just saying, ‘Hey, do you want to see what’s on trend? Do you want to see just what is making mainstream news? Do you want to see just what’s in your algorithm?’\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Sure, the pandemic was a system shock, and people got out of the habit of in-person theater attendance as streaming gained popularity. Yes, costs have been rising.\u00a0<\/p>\n But many theater owners and industry experts, including Kidman \u2014 who\u2019s studied the movie sector extensively \u2014 say the reasons for today\u2019s movie theater struggles are structural and predate the pandemic. They trace many problems back to the fickle, studio-controlled nature of the business.\u00a0<\/p>\n Over the years, studios have instituted terms that make it increasingly difficult for theaters to run a profit.\u00a0<\/p>\n Most theaters showing first-run movies face similar problems, whether they\u2019re publicly owned multiplexes with 12-plus screens or small, independent theaters.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the smaller theaters are having a harder time weathering the challenges.\u00a0<\/p>\n Film rental costs are at an all-time high, with revenue splits for studios in some cases exceeding 60% of ticket revenue, said Jeff Brein, the managing partner of Far Away Entertainment, a small regional chain of local theaters that includes the Admiral Theater in West Seattle and others in Anacortes, Lynnwood, Stanwood and Bainbridge.\u00a0<\/p>\n Distributors often require multiweek \u201cclean screens,\u201d meaning no other movie is shown during a certain run, giving theaters with few screens little flexibility to draw in visitors with another movie if a release is performing poorly.\u00a0<\/p>\n Studios have also pushed films to video-on-demand and streaming increasingly quickly, which impacts attendance.\u00a0<\/p>\n Beth Barrett, artistic director of SIFF, the nonprofit that runs the Seattle International Film Festival and operates three theaters year-round, pointed to recent movies with longer theatrical windows like \u201cMarty Supreme\u201d and the Korean satire \u201cNo Other Choice\u201d\u00a0that drew big crowds at SIFF.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are coming to the cinemas because they cannot stream it for a long time,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another issue, said Patrick Corcoran, a movie theater business consultant and a former vice president at the National Association of Theatre Owners (now Cinema United):<\/span> studios are releasing fewer movies, putting their chips on safe bets with higher margins rather than more midbudget productions.\u00a0<\/p>\n This blockbuster-or-bust strategy directly impacts theaters because “going to the movie theater is a habit in a lot of ways,\u201d he said. Theaters can’t tell audiences, “Sorry, we don’t have anything you’re interested in this week. But wait six weeks, and there’s that big movie that everybody’s talking about.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Corcoran and other industry veterans predict that further studio consolidation through the pending merger of giants Warner Bros. and Paramount could exacerbate this trend and pose an existential threat to smaller cinemas. (Both companies have claimed they will not decrease production.)\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the real scary points for independent theaters is that studios are consolidating all of their resources to not take some of those artistic swings,\u201d SIFF\u2019s Barrett said. “The homogenization of titles coming out of the studio system is the reason that people don’t go to the movies, and so it actually ends up shooting everyone in the foot.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMega\u201d scale appeared to be the answer about 60 years ago with the advent of the multiplex. Today \u2014 with the rest of the indie theaters stuck in the middle \u2014 scaling down theater size, and perhaps even loosening a reliance on first-run studio movies, seems one of the few viable ways forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n‘Show me something different’<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Micro boom, macro reasons\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n