Can Movie Theaters Become the New Malls?
The biggest cinema chains in the U.S. are about to be revamped, including in some cases with bowling alleys and arcade centers… and that might be a good thing.
In October 2019, master filmmaker Martin Scorsese famously opined that movie theaters had become diluted. With the rise of franchise films and a heavy emphasis by Hollywood studios on intellectual property, the director of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull lamented that cinemas “have become amusement parks.”
He made the comments while speaking about his new four-hour epic, The Irishman, which was then playing at the BFI London Film Festival before premiering where most people would be able to see it: on Netflix. Yet while it should be noted that Scorsese is no fan of superhero movies and their multiplex brethren, the director holds no ill will toward the genre itself. He even admires the craft of the filmmaking that goes into them. Nonetheless, he wondered six years ago if they were also “creating another kind of audience that thinks cinema is that.”
All these years later, it would seem that many of the biggest cinema chains in North America have answered with a resounding… maybe?
Theater owners comprising members of the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), which represents the eight largest movie theater chains in North America, announced Thursday they alone will be spending $2.2 billion on renovating 21,000 screens and untold scores of movie houses in the U.S. and Canada. Acting in concert with a larger movement among cinema owners beyond NATO’s ranks, this represents a bold move at a time when movie theaters are still recovering from the disruption of the COVID pandemic. And most of their investment will be in improved sound and projection, as well as apparently developing a greater emphasis on dine-in options at various movie houses (think the Alamo Drafthouse experience).
For movie lovers, this sounds all well and good, but there were further elements revealed in the initial announcement that left a few folks on social media dazed. These details included investments in adding bowling alleys and arcades to some multiplexes. Furthermore, Variety seemed to suggest yesterday that other theaters were also adding pickleball courts and ziplines to their entertainment options. While one theater owner has indeed built an outdoor pickleball court (in Texas, of course), sources close to NATO have told Den of Geek that these rumors have been exaggerated.* So don’t go in expecting ziplines anytime soon.
Even so, at a glance one might wonder if movie theaters really are becoming veritable amusement parks—or at the very least a modern entertainment center reminiscent of the arcade/laser tag/miniature golf hybrids that were so popular in the 1980s and ’90s. As a cinephile who, indeed, writes about cinema for a living, this could leave mixed feelings. It would seem Scorsese’s fear of cinemas increasingly drifting toward the “theme park” aesthetic is coming to pass.
And yet, one might offer an alternative point: this could prove to be very good for the art-form that so many of us love. After all, the Goodfellas maestro’s comments were, again, made on the other side of the COVID pandemic. And while nearly every year since has shown steadily rising movie theater attendance around the globe, they still have not gotten back to 2019 numbers. In fact, movie theater attendance is softer in 2024 than 2023—in large part because American movie studios and streaming services let the labor strikes of last year drag on for six months, leading to a dearth in product for theater owners to showcase.
Yet a case can be made that a major reason cinemas have not been able to return to the ticket sales of 2019 or earlier is because there is simply less content. Consider that while 2023 marked the most “normal” year since the pandemic, its spring was still down 25 percent from 2019. However, there were also 25 percent fewer movies released by the major studios than there had been four years earlier in the same timeframe. In other words, the studios have continued to make fewer and fewer movies in their increasingly risk-averse strategies, starving cinemas of consistent enticing attractions. It also ironically reinforces to audiences the lethal impression that there are only a handful of movies in a year they need to see. If moviegoing is seen as only an “event,” as opposed to a regular activity, the industry will continue to contract.
Which brings us back to those bowling alleys, arcades, and phantom ziplines. Admittedly, the idea of seeing folks gathering at cinemas for a round of bowling instead of popcorn triggers the “old man yelling at clouds” in me. But at the same time, it seems like a shrewd strategy. When this writer was a child of the ‘90s and 2000s, going to the movies every weekend was just an activity kids enjoyed as much as the pool in the summer or a basketball court in the autumn—or a mall year-round.
Once such a crucial center of American life in the late 20th century, George Romero made a satire out of consumers being zombies drawn toward shopping centers like a moth to the flame. But that was in 1978. Today with the proliferation of online shopping, the mall is itself on the verge of extinction. Nonetheless, young people and families still need places to go for entertainment and activity. They still need amusements. Thirty or forty years ago, that was represented by a center of capitalism where a movie theater might be just one component. Tomorrow it could be a theater house where multiplex screens are just one of several options for family-friendly activities.
Admittedly, it is far too early to say how this will actually work, much less how it might affect (say) the lack of screens available for independent movies that could play for a larger audience. But in theory, the prospect of encouraging new generations of moviegoers to see a movie theater as a weekend destination where they could hang out, have fun, and hell, even see a movie, could be a way to encourage the old habits that studios have let atrophy.
*An earlier version of this article reported the pickleball and zipline options as a common part of the theater renovations.
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David Crow is the movies editor at Den of Geek. He has long been proud of his geek credentials. Raised on cinema classics that ranged from…