(Atlantic) Atlas Cinema’s save the theater campaign has been effective enough to stay afloat until new movies will be released in the spring.
Jacob and Rylea Anderson purchased the Atlantic movie theater in November 2019. Shortly thereafter they faced with a big obstacle. “March 16th the Governor came down with everything having to be closed up. Of course we closed just as we were getting back to having good movies and good attendance. January and February are always slow. Just as we were starting to ramp up we had to shut down.”
In July they reopened, but had no new movies were available to show. “We were able to open back up with limited seating, but the studios weren’t releasing anything new.” Anderson says, “Not too many people were feeling save enough to come out yet and they didn’t want to see an older movie that they could watch on a streaming service.”
A saving grace has been the support they’ve received from the community by opening up the concession stand on Friday nights for curbside pickup Rylea’s ‘Save the Cinema’ idea of selling popcorn boxes as gifts during the holidays. “We’ve had pretty good success with this. We’ve sold out and that was quite an eye opener. We’ve been very happy with that.”
Anderson is optimistic with a vaccine on the way and new releases set to come out that they’ll be able to hit the ground running in a few months.
