One Fix for Ailing Movie Theaters? Becoming Nonprofits.

New York Times

17-02-2025

Nicki Wilson was shocked when her local newspaper reported in March 2023 that the Triplex Theater, an independent four-screen movie house in Great Barrington, Mass., was shutting down after almost three decades in business.
The Triplex, the only theater in town, was a much-loved fixture, attracting moviegoers from all around the Berkshires, even on winter nights when not much else was open, Ms. Wilson said.
'I couldn't imagine living in a town without a movie theater,' she said.
Ms. Wilson wasn't the only one who felt this way, and after a communitywide campaign the Triplex reopened in November 2023 in a much different form. No longer is it dependent on ticket and popcorn sales. The Triplex has become a nonprofit organization relying on donations, grants and plenty of volunteer labor. And instead of leaning on the next Hollywood blockbuster, the Triplex focuses on what the community wants to see.
'In an independent theater, you can show what you want,' said Gail Lansky, vice president of the Triplex's board. 'You can show retrospectives. You can show foreign films. You can do film festivals. Free Saturdays for kids'
Certainly not all nonprofit theaters are doing well, but the model has worked, at least so far, in places like the Berkshires, where a devoted and well-heeled clientele is willing and able to support the arts. Two nearby nonprofit movie theaters in New York, the Moviehouse in Millerton and the Crandell Theater in Chatham, have attracted sizable fan bases. Across the country, more than 250 movie theaters are nonprofits, said Bryan Braunlich, executive director of the Cinema Foundation, a movie-industry group that provides research for cinemas.
'We are definitely seeing a trend of communities rallying around their local theaters,' he said.
And movie theaters have needed saving. Since 2019, the number of screens operating in the United States has declined 12 percent, to 36,369 as of 2023, said David Hancock, chief analyst in media and entertainment at the research firm Omdia. The popularity of at-home streaming over the past decade was a factor. Before the pandemic, audience numbers were already waning, but Covid nearly dealt the industry a death blow, as consumers got used to staying home and became pickier about what movies they went to a theater to see.
'People certainly came back, but much more slowly,' said the Triplex's former owner, Richard Stanley. 'Ultimately, I saw the handwriting on the wall and decided I had to close.'
When a theater shuts down in town, it's not just a problem for film buffs. Because of their unique architecture, with sloped floors and few windows, they are hard to convert to other purposes and often leave prominent spaces empty.
Becoming a nonprofit allows theaters to draw on different revenue sources, like film festivals, and the hope is that a theater catering to the people of a town will build a loyal and supportive base.
This doesn't happen overnight. That was the case with the Belcourt Theater in Nashville. A community group had raised millions of dollars to operate and renovate the 1925 movie palace, which briefly served as the main stage of the Grand Ole Opry.
'All of us who work in the theater remember the days when we'd show 'Badlands' to four people, and now we show 'Badlands' to 150 to 200 people,' said the Belcourt's executive director, Stephanie Silverman, referring to the director Terrence Malick's debut feature from 1973.
Those who rallied around the Triplex are hoping for the same. When the theater opened in 1995 on the site of a burned-down lumberyard, nearby shopping centers had sucked the life out of Main Street and Great Barrington was struggling economically, said Mr. Stanley, Triplex's former owner.
Main Street is a very different place today, largely because of an influx of tourists and weekenders, and the Triplex 'was a very pivotal, really core thing that brought people to town,' said Betsy Andrus, executive director of the Southern Berkshire Chamber of Commerce.
By 2023, two other multiplexes in the Berkshires, in Lanesborough and North Adams, had already shut down. But Ms. Wilson believed there was hope for the Triplex. She called Mr. Stanley to ask if there was some way to reopen the theater.
'I asked what we could do, and he said, 'Well, pay me $1 million and you can buy the theater,'' she said.
Ms. Wilson didn't have $1 million to spare, but she did have plenty of friends. In April 2023, she invited her neighbors to her living room to discuss saving the theater. The group, which called itself Save the Triplex, created a GoFundMe page and a website to raise money. The response was overwhelming, said Hannah Wilken, who had spent many weekends at the Triplex with her friends as a teenager and was involved with the fund-raising.
Even people who hadn't been to the theater since before Covid felt a visceral connection to the place. 'We just started getting inundated with people saying: 'I want to help. I want to donate. Sign me up,'' Ms. Wilken said.
The actress Karen Allen, who owns a fiber-arts store in town, turned over memorabilia from 'Raiders of the Lost Ark,' which she starred in, for an auction. A major boost came when the photographer Gregory Crewdson donated $225,000, after selling copies of a signed limited edition of his work.
Within a few months, the group had raised $246,000 — enough to pay the first year's mortgage. Mr. Stanley liked the idea of keeping the Triplex alive as a nonprofit run by the town's residents and gave Ms. Wilson's group a five-year mortgage to buy the theater.
The campaign has benefited from the large and devoted Berkshires arts community, which regularly draws celebrities to town. Bill Murray showed up at the Triplex to discuss 'The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou,' the Wes Anderson film in which Mr. Murray played the title character, and Joan Baez was there for a showing of a documentary on her life. Arlo Guthrie discussed the 1969 movie 'Alice's Restaurant,' which had been filmed nearby. Not all the events have made money, but enough have done well to keep the Triplex going.
Movie theaters remain a dicey business, and for the Triplex to survive long term it will need a lot more money. The four screening rooms need major renovations. And although an active board oversees the theater's operations, it had just two paid employees until this month. (A third manager starts later this month, and the theater also pays the people who sell tickets and popcorn.) Ms. Wilson, the board's president, hopes to hire more people, but for now the theater still depends largely on volunteers.
'The challenges are real,' said Ms. Lansky, the board's vice president. 'Everybody knows that an independent theater cannot rely on tickets and concessions alone.'
Nonprofit theaters also tend to be a low priority for film distributors, Mr. Hancock of Omdia said. That means they can't always show the latest Hollywood blockbuster and must find other ways to keep up audience enthusiasm and a continuing commitment from the community members to donate money and volunteer their time, he said.
'The model can work, but only if the cinema is valued by the local community,' Mr. Hancock added.
Still, those behind the Triplex's revival believe an audience is out there. Sitting at home and watching movies on Netflix just isn't the same thing, said Ben Elliott, a manager at the theater and one of its few paid staff members.
Mr. Elliott grew up in Great Barrington and regularly visited the Triplex as a child. One of the things he missed during Covid was the sound of conversations in the lobby after a movie ended.
'Being together in a physical space is something that's becoming rarer and rarer, and holding on to that, I think, is important for communities across the country,' he said. 'It's also, for us, the most viable way to keep a theater open.'