Jesse Mercury Plack, general manager of Ballard’s Majestic Bay Theatres, changes the marquee in Seattle on Feb. 12. (Kevin Clark / The Seattle Times)
Jesse Mercury Plack, general manager of Ballard’s Majestic Bay Theatres, changes the marquee in Seattle on Feb. 12. (Kevin Clark / The Seattle Times)
By
Margo Vansynghel
Seattle Times arts economy reporter
Cocktail bars. Loyalty programs. Motion-enabled chairs that shake and spray scents. Even pickleball and bowling.
Amid a national drop in moviegoing, these are just some ways movie theaters have tried to bring audiences back.
But turns out what’s working is the old-school movie experience.
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’t find online, surefire classics they’ve never seen on the big screen and the kind of intimate, communal, neighborhood-centric (and often less expensive) experience that smaller theaters can bring.
Tiny arthouse cinemas in Seattle and around the country are faring well in what online publication IndieWire recently declared the “golden age of microcinemas.” 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.
“Movie theaters as we’ve known them for the past century will not continue in the way they have been,” said Shawna Kidman, an associate professor of communication at UC San Diego.
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There are 13 independent movie theaters currently operating in Seattle, down from a high of 21 in 2012.
Image 1 of 1
Source: Seattle Times reporting (Reporting by Margo Vansynghel, graphic by Chris Kaeser / The Seattle Times)
First, a disclaimer. Don’t 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 and lay off 64 workers after filing for bankruptcy last month.
At the IPIC theater in Redmond, you can watch first-run movies while enjoying drinks and dinner. The company filed for bankruptcy this month and will close at the end of April. (Courtesy of IPIC)
At the IPIC theater in Redmond, you can watch first-run movies while enjoying drinks and dinner. The company filed for bankruptcy this month and will close at the end of April. (Courtesy of IPIC)
Independently owned theaters haven’t been spared either: Nonprofits like SIFF and the Pacific Science Center have recently closed or sold theaters.
The closure of the Varsity Theater earlier this year drew the curtain on the University District’s era as a cinema hub. And with just 13 operating today, Seattle’s 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.
A handful of those could be considered “microtheaters,” but most are larger, three- or four-screen cinemas owned and operated as local businesses or nonprofits.
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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.
Most independent theaters have a business model that relies at least in part on mainstream, “first-run” movies, like “Zootopia 2” or “Wicked.”
Which means these theaters, much like multiplexes, are stuck with the blockbuster-or-bust cycle of Hollywood — and an audience that is kind of over it.
Microcinemas literally offer an alternative. And that’s precisely why they’re having a moment.
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.
Seattle’s vibrant arts scene contributes greatly to the dynamism of our region. But it faces challenges, including skyrocketing costs, real estate issues and ongoing fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. With financial support from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, The Seattle Times takes an in-depth look at the business of the arts and the arts as an economic driver in our region. We invite you to join the conversation. Send your stories, comments, tips and suggestions to artseconomy@seattletimes.com.
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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.
All they knew was that a) tickets were free and b) it would likely be something pretty weird. Among the things they’d seen here before: an ’80s movie made in Hong Kong about an evil vase and a 4K rerelease of the landmark anime movie “Angel’s Egg.”
Most didn’t regularly go to the movies, they said, but added that because The Beacon’s programming was unique, it was worth seeing in person.
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.
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’ revenue comes from concessions.)
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).
“We’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,” Swenson said. “Like: If we get 20 people in here, that’s OK, that works. But if we have a 500-seat venue, that’s a disaster.”
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.
DeAnna Berger works in the cramped projection booth at the Grand Illusion movie theater, Nov. 13, 2017, in Seattle. The Grand Illusion has since lost its lease and is now looking for a new location and doing pop-up events. (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
DeAnna Berger works in the cramped projection booth at the Grand Illusion movie theater, Nov. 13, 2017, in Seattle. The Grand Illusion has since lost its lease and is now looking for a new location... (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
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’s Northwest Film Forum.
The Film Forum, which has two screens and seats a total of 156, has also been “doing well,” said newly minted Executive Director Jill Louise Busby.
While the organization faced layoffs in 2024, 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.
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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 “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie” (2004), documentaries and cult classics — many of which can’t be easily streamed — as well as increased partnerships with organizations and its surrounding neighborhood.
“People are ready to come back, but you have to give them a reason to be there,” Busby said. “As 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?’”
But many theater owners and industry experts, including Kidman — who’s studied the movie sector extensively — say the reasons for today’s movie theater struggles are structural and predate the pandemic. They trace many problems back to the fickle, studio-controlled nature of the business.
Over the years, studios have instituted terms that make it increasingly difficult for theaters to run a profit.
Most theaters showing first-run movies face similar problems, whether they’re publicly owned multiplexes with 12-plus screens or small, independent theaters.
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But the smaller theaters are having a harder time weathering the challenges.
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.
Distributors often require multiweek “clean screens,” 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.
Studios have also pushed films to video-on-demand and streaming increasingly quickly, which impacts attendance.
The SIFF Cinema Downtown theater (previously known as Cinerama) is located at the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Lenora Street in Seattle. (M. Scott Brauer / Special to The Seattle Times, 2024)
The SIFF Cinema Downtown theater (previously known as Cinerama) is located at the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Lenora Street in Seattle. (M. Scott Brauer / Special to The Seattle Times, 2024)
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 “Marty Supreme” and the Korean satire “No Other Choice” that drew big crowds at SIFF.
“People are coming to the cinemas because they cannot stream it for a long time,” she said.
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): studios are releasing fewer movies, putting their chips on safe bets with higher margins rather than more midbudget productions.
This blockbuster-or-bust strategy directly impacts theaters because “going to the movie theater is a habit in a lot of ways,” 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.”
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.)
“One 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,” SIFF’s 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.”
“Mega” scale appeared to be the answer about 60 years ago with the advent of the multiplex. Today — with the rest of the indie theaters stuck in the middle — scaling down theater size, and perhaps even loosening a reliance on first-run studio movies, seems one of the few viable ways forward.
Case in point: Tasveer, the South Asian art organization that purchased the building formerly home to the Ark Lodge Cinemas, transformed one of the building’s four theaters into a lounge.
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Jesse Mercury Plack, general manager of Ballard’s Majestic Bay Theatres, changes the marquee in Seattle on Feb. 12. (Kevin Clark / The Seattle Times)
By
Margo Vansynghel
Seattle Times arts economy reporter
Cocktail bars. Loyalty programs. Motion-enabled chairs that shake and spray scents. Even pickleball and bowling.
Amid a national drop in moviegoing, these are just some ways movie theaters have tried to bring audiences back.
But turns out what’s working is the old-school movie experience.
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’t find online, surefire classics they’ve never seen on the big screen and the kind of intimate, communal, neighborhood-centric (and often less expensive) experience that smaller theaters can bring.
Tiny arthouse cinemas in Seattle and around the country are faring well in what online publication IndieWire recently declared the “golden age of microcinemas.” 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.
“Movie theaters as we’ve known them for the past century will not continue in the way they have been,” said Shawna Kidman, an associate professor of communication at UC San Diego.
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‘Show me something different’
Independent movie theaters downThere are 13 independent movie theaters currently operating in Seattle, down from a high of 21 in 2012.
Image 1 of 1
Source: Seattle Times reporting (Reporting by Margo Vansynghel, graphic by Chris Kaeser / The Seattle Times)
First, a disclaimer. Don’t 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 and lay off 64 workers after filing for bankruptcy last month.
At the IPIC theater in Redmond, you can watch first-run movies while enjoying drinks and dinner. The company filed for bankruptcy this month and will close at the end of April. (Courtesy of IPIC)
At the IPIC theater in Redmond, you can watch first-run movies while enjoying drinks and dinner. The company filed for bankruptcy this month and will close at the end of April. (Courtesy of IPIC)
Independently owned theaters haven’t been spared either: Nonprofits like SIFF and the Pacific Science Center have recently closed or sold theaters.
The closure of the Varsity Theater earlier this year drew the curtain on the University District’s era as a cinema hub. And with just 13 operating today, Seattle’s 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.
A handful of those could be considered “microtheaters,” but most are larger, three- or four-screen cinemas owned and operated as local businesses or nonprofits.
Advertising
Skip Ad
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.
Most independent theaters have a business model that relies at least in part on mainstream, “first-run” movies, like “Zootopia 2” or “Wicked.”
Which means these theaters, much like multiplexes, are stuck with the blockbuster-or-bust cycle of Hollywood — and an audience that is kind of over it.
Microcinemas literally offer an alternative. And that’s precisely why they’re having a moment.
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.
Seattle’s vibrant arts scene contributes greatly to the dynamism of our region. But it faces challenges, including skyrocketing costs, real estate issues and ongoing fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. With financial support from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, The Seattle Times takes an in-depth look at the business of the arts and the arts as an economic driver in our region. We invite you to join the conversation. Send your stories, comments, tips and suggestions to artseconomy@seattletimes.com.
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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.
All they knew was that a) tickets were free and b) it would likely be something pretty weird. Among the things they’d seen here before: an ’80s movie made in Hong Kong about an evil vase and a 4K rerelease of the landmark anime movie “Angel’s Egg.”
Most didn’t regularly go to the movies, they said, but added that because The Beacon’s programming was unique, it was worth seeing in person.
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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.
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’ revenue comes from concessions.)
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).
“We’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,” Swenson said. “Like: If we get 20 people in here, that’s OK, that works. But if we have a 500-seat venue, that’s a disaster.”
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.
DeAnna Berger works in the cramped projection booth at the Grand Illusion movie theater, Nov. 13, 2017, in Seattle. The Grand Illusion has since lost its lease and is now looking for a new location and doing pop-up events. (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
DeAnna Berger works in the cramped projection booth at the Grand Illusion movie theater, Nov. 13, 2017, in Seattle. The Grand Illusion has since lost its lease and is now looking for a new location... (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
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’s Northwest Film Forum.
The Film Forum, which has two screens and seats a total of 156, has also been “doing well,” said newly minted Executive Director Jill Louise Busby.
While the organization faced layoffs in 2024, 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.
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Skip Ad
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 “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie” (2004), documentaries and cult classics — many of which can’t be easily streamed — as well as increased partnerships with organizations and its surrounding neighborhood.
“People are ready to come back, but you have to give them a reason to be there,” Busby said. “As 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?’”
Micro boom, macro reasons
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.But many theater owners and industry experts, including Kidman — who’s studied the movie sector extensively — say the reasons for today’s movie theater struggles are structural and predate the pandemic. They trace many problems back to the fickle, studio-controlled nature of the business.
Over the years, studios have instituted terms that make it increasingly difficult for theaters to run a profit.
Most theaters showing first-run movies face similar problems, whether they’re publicly owned multiplexes with 12-plus screens or small, independent theaters.
Advertising
Skip Ad
But the smaller theaters are having a harder time weathering the challenges.
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.
Distributors often require multiweek “clean screens,” 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.
Studios have also pushed films to video-on-demand and streaming increasingly quickly, which impacts attendance.
The SIFF Cinema Downtown theater (previously known as Cinerama) is located at the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Lenora Street in Seattle. (M. Scott Brauer / Special to The Seattle Times, 2024)
The SIFF Cinema Downtown theater (previously known as Cinerama) is located at the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Lenora Street in Seattle. (M. Scott Brauer / Special to The Seattle Times, 2024)
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 “Marty Supreme” and the Korean satire “No Other Choice” that drew big crowds at SIFF.
“People are coming to the cinemas because they cannot stream it for a long time,” she said.
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): studios are releasing fewer movies, putting their chips on safe bets with higher margins rather than more midbudget productions.
This blockbuster-or-bust strategy directly impacts theaters because “going to the movie theater is a habit in a lot of ways,” 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.”
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.)
“One 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,” SIFF’s 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.”
“Mega” scale appeared to be the answer about 60 years ago with the advent of the multiplex. Today — with the rest of the indie theaters stuck in the middle — scaling down theater size, and perhaps even loosening a reliance on first-run studio movies, seems one of the few viable ways forward.
Case in point: Tasveer, the South Asian art organization that purchased the building formerly home to the Ark Lodge Cinemas, transformed one of the building’s four theaters into a lounge.
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