Tales From the Lobby: Small Theaters and Survival in a Blockbuster Summer

I cover audience. I wrote about film school in the era of directors who cut their teeth on YouTube, streamers’ microdrama strategies, IMAX’s Odyssey trap, video game adaptations hitting a wall and comedy’s quest for a Backrooms moment. I’m at matthew@theankler.com

---

Last fall, I drove 4,050 miles to 58 theaters in 20 states, and what I remember is how empty they were. In Spearman, Texas, Gary Ellsworth told me not one person had turned up for The Smashing Machine the week before. In Pagosa Springs, Colo., Ann Sanders and I watched eight people file in for Kiss of the Spider Woman from her projection booth; a year earlier, a three-person night for Joker: Folie à Deux had forced her to lay off her staff and run the place alone. It was the worst October for domestic box office since 1997 (excluding Covid). What the operators kept describing wasn’t anger so much as helplessness — the product wasn’t coming, and when it did, holdover mandates and 65 percent splits made even the good weeks hard to survive. “It doesn’t feel like the industry wants us to be successful,” one owner told me.

This summer I called some of them back.

Thank you for being a paid subscriber. Click here to continue.