I can think of at least 4 big movie theaters in DC that did this.

The Uptown used to do revivals between big releases. I saw Blade Runner, Ben Hur, 2001, and other classics there. They did not make money on those and had to convert to 100% current releases. I think it is now closed.

The Air & Space IMAX theater used to do “Sci Fi Sundays” where they played a classic science fiction movie on Sunday evenings as the last showing.

The Avalon is in one of the richest neighborhoods on DC/MD border. When it went bankrupt all the neighbors pooled their money and started a nonprofit to keep it open.

The AFI has a theater in a MD suburb, which shows all sorts of revivals and classics year round.

In every one of these theaters I am always shocked to see how few people a classic pulls in. Went to see Blade Runner “Final Cut” at AFI on a huge screen and there were like 40 people. 2001 in a 70mm print was about half full. Inception or Interstellar in IMAX (the real one, 70 ft tall screen) was less than half full.

A small takeaway is that, with so much historical catalog, the audience is very finely chopped up. Only a relatively small % of people love each old movie enough to rally to the theater at a specific night and time.

The big takeaway is how crucial strong marketing is for theater attendance. Undoubtedly there were many available casual fans who simply did not know about these showings. Mass marketing is hard and expensive.

Every top comment on HN is someone with an unprofitable use case complaining that no one serves them. Change my mind.

The smaller independent theaters near me tend to do more of this sort of thing. The one near me is doing an entire month of a Samurai movies. Also Month Python and the Holy Grail, and War of the Worlds (2005). All their first run movies tend to be independent ones.

Not saying that chains shouldn't rerun old movies, just saying those types of theaters do exist. It's the only way I can truely get a movie theater experience for things made before I was born.

You're completely right and obviously many many people would want to go and see something like the good the bad and the ugly in theatres - probably enough to fill the theatre for a showing or two - but the problem is how would they know it's on? A lot of people look up what movies are on that week, but most people are aware that the big movies are ok a the moment because they're marketed and obviously that marketing costs money. What studio or theatre chain is going to spend millions (or even thousands) on marketing a 30+ year old movie that might take in a couple of hundred k at the box office.

There's a reason cinemas don't play old movies and it's not because they think there's no one who wants to see them, sadly the logistics of it are too costly (in all sorts of ways beyond just base line finances too).

Alamo Drafthouse does this kind of thing constantly. Not just showings of old movies (where "old" can mean anything from 80 to 5 years), but themed movie parties with props and costumes and special food and drinks. They'll do a theme for the month and curate a set of movies around it, showing a trailer for the collection before regular movies. They'll have the original directors or stars come in for screenings and they'll do Q&A afterward.

Combined with the overall experience (which is hands and feet above that of Cinemark or AMC), Alamo feels like the only theater company that still gets it.

Despite the fact I share your tastes I think things have simply changed. In the 80s I had a choice of theatres to go see funky underground and classic movies. I remember one place played Rocky Horror, Liquid Sky and Heavy Metal every weekend for years. I saw Rocky Horror in three different Houston theatres and sincerely regret not seeing it in at least one or two more, which tells you how many places we had playing non-mainstream movies.

The River Oaks Theatre played so many different movies they had to publish a monthly calendar because it was often a new movie every night. In fact they had a bar in the same parking lot (Marfreless) that was movie nerd hangout downstairs and make out spot upstairs.

Fast forward to today and most of those theatres are gone. The nameless theatre in a strip mall on Gessner is gone as is the Landmark Greenway, The Alabama Theatre was turned into a Bookstop and is now a Trader Joe's. The Bellaire Theatre was squeezed to death by Whole Foods dominating their parking lot. Even a recent entrant with Angelika downtown which became the Sundance theatre ended up flipping to an AMC. The one to last the longest, River Oaks Theatre was shuttered after Covid 19 put them a year behind on rent and their landlord refused to renew the lease without an agreement to pay the back rent.

River Oaks had already sold to Landmark just to survive and Landmark let the lease lapse which tells you all you need to know about the margins they were operating under. It just isn't profitable enough to sustain a theatre any more. Marfreless is still alive and well.

People have a surplus of choices and immediate, online gratification available 24/7. No need to plan with friends, arrange a baby sitter or slog through traffic to sit in a theatre. Although I agree that many movies are undoubtedly best viewed on a big screen with a good soundsystem, it appears we're in the minority and there just aren't enough of us to keep places profitable.

I too have seen theaters that offered great old movies, but only a few people showed up.

I for one would be happy if I never saw another action movie, or superhero flick.

I get why the studios are making them. They can be seen around the world. The movies are simple so dialogue, script, and plot, don't matter much.

Plus--there's another whole fortune to be made on licensing products.

As to why people don't go to the theater, I guess it's a generational thing?

I loved going to a dinner, and a movie, on a friday night with my high school, and college, girlfriend.

Today 20 somethings have Netflix and chill. If I had Netflix and chill years ago, I would have probally gone that route too.

Before everything shut down last year, my local theaters played a showing of a classic film each month, often Hitchcock. The few I went to had plenty of attendees.

Another local theater took the lockdown as an opportunity to do outdoor socially-distanced showings of previous blockbusters, like The Dark Knight. Plenty of attendees there, too.

I'd be happy to have more showings like that.

There are plenty that do this. Some do this exclusively, like the New Beverly Cinema. I suppose you're suggesting that the national brands should offer this rather than specialty houses. That could be pretty cool, but they need to step it up a bit.

It needs to be more demand-driven and offer up tons of titles. I'd love to be able to pick a title and see it in a theater. I want the experience where I can select a film from a vast library and just go see it. Maybe I could post about it to get other confirmed bookings, and then if it hits a threshold, it gets played. There are significant legal complications for licensing, surely, and there are practical technical challenges around distribution and DRM.

Additionally, the theaters need to sell drinks and offer entertaining environments in more of a mixed way. Arclight had a fair amount of success with its concept, offering cafe, bar, and restaurant experiences.

I have a friend works for American cinematheque. If you live in the Los Angeles area this is what you are looking for. Not just old movies but q&a with people involved in the film making. https://americancinematheque.com/

In Europe this is different though. In Amsterdam we have 10+ cinemas showing a lot of classics too, unlimited for 20 euros a month in amazing theatres. I rarely go to these large cinemas anymore.

What you want is done in many cities across America. And probably across the world. Both by businesses and by the municipalities themselves. Typically, movie theaters that show "classics" tend to exist in larger cities, of course. Because smaller towns cannot support them economically. But many small towns also show classic movies, often for free, on a regular basis. Just look for it.

Movie theaters have a financial incentive to show old films if audiences are interested in watching, because the theaters get to keep a larger cut of the box office revenue compared to new releases. If the theaters aren’t showing old movies, I don’t think it’s because of a lack of imagination on their part.

You could also say that 99% of the internet is stale and that we are typically consuming content created over the last few days. Maybe we need some all purpose content curation system that gets us the movies, articles, books that would be most relevant to us regardless of when they were created.

I'm GenX and in my youth in Toronto I'd only go to the Fox and The bloor movie theater and they only played old things. I have not been to a theater in years after walking out of 10 movies in a row for so boring/silly.

I think this model works for classical music and opera because there just aren't that many works worth performing. How many operas are there that are still performed? 80% of performances are probably of the top twenty operas, certainly under a hundred. 99% of performances are covered by maybe a few hundred.

How many good old films are there? An order of magnitude more than that! So what do you put on? Whatever you choose, you won't attract a significant chunk of fans, the way you can attract a significant chunk of opera fans by putting on The Magic Flute.

There are probably a lot more film fans than opera fans. But opera fans are probably willing to spend a lot more per event than film fans.

This is why the argument that rampant piracy will kill creative industries has no sway for me. There already exists multiple lifetimes or movies to watch, books to read, and music to hear. Why should I be concerned that it was all made before the piracy apocalypse? Realistically, government propaganda and eccentric multi-millionaires will continue produce mid-budget films with good production value and the starving artists and no-budget passion projects will also continue their productions unabated.

There’s a “hipster” movie theater near me that does this. It seems to be moderately successful, but by no means a runaway success. I just don’t think the demand is there for this to be a widespread business.

Totally agree here. Especially since a lot of the newer projectors and movies I think are digital formats. There's a local art theater here that is excellent that does a lot of older movies and movie marathons. But I think also getting the rights can be a trick too.

I just want to say being able to see Wrath of Khan in a theater was really worth it!

Ok, I crunched some numbers today. It turns out that in The Netherlands, 98.9% of screenings are from 2019,2020,2021. There are quite some cinemas showing old films, but it's only 1.1%. I based this on data from https://www.filmladder.nl.

Fortunately I have a DVD/VHS* store rental near me that has 100,000+ titles, so as longs as the DVDs don't break, this will be an option for me.

I don't understand why DVD stores don't make a comeback, because they aren't subject to the crazy streaming licenses.

Or am I really that "unhip"?

* Yes, you can actually rent a VHS player too

Theatres in my city do this, it is fantastic. I paid normal prices to go watch Heat on the big screen in 2021 and it was worth every penny.

As someone who really didn't watch movies until recently, I have missed a lot of them. So being able to watch some of the iconic movies of yesterday in the theatre has been great.

https://stanfordtheatre.org is a repertory cinema (though currently closed due to covid) that has themed schedules (one month Hitchcock, another month Satyajit Ray, etc).

I agree, especially since a portion of the "new" movies are regurgitation of old classics anyway and more often than not weaker than the original movies.

Alamo draft house does this as a core part of their business model. They even usually give you souvenirs and have a themed menu around it.

Same with me but I can see that not many people are like that so it's not profitable.

Blame copyright. It's the main reason we can't have nice things.

20 or 30 years ought to be more than enough time before a film lapses into public domain.