Comments on: Wordsmiths Books Closes Suddenly

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:43:34 +0000

It’s more a land and construction cost issue. If they can’t show max possible return for every screen (which means pulling people from a larger catchment area), I can’t see anyone pursuing it for the foreseeable future. That’s the beauty of the raggedy older theaters — they can be assumed and operated on the cheap by people with a passion for running an art house. That’s what’s going on with the Plaza right now.

Maybe, in good economic times, some company might develop 8 screens there and devote one to art fare part of the time to see how it performed. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t generally specialize in “Oscar-worthy” fare, as Midtown often does. Plus, Midtown has beer!

By: lumpintheroad

lumpintheroad — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:34:08 +0000

Since it would be right next to the HS, I’m thinking Scott’s right about it needing to be a little more mainstream than Landmark. But I also think it would be easy to devote at least one screen or a couple nights a week to more avant garde fare.

Then again, now that I think about it, Landmark’s right next to Grady HS. lol

By: FM Fats

FM Fats — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:12:27 +0000

Netflix has killed repertory cinema.

By: brian

brian — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:26:54 +0000

What about something like Landmark in Midtown, Scott? Do you think that would have a shot in Decatur?

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:31:24 +0000

I’ve talked with the city before specifically about a cinema on that parcel, Dawg. At one point, we’d even sourced a group that was looking around the country for downtown locations for medium-sized (4-8 screens) projects. Both parcel size and location are ideal there but, as I recall, there were a number of hurdles associated with the county’s ownership of it (even though they’ve looked at unloading it, I believe).

Whether a cinema group could be recruited would depend on what we’re trying to accomplish. No one would do land acquisition and new construction for an art house operation. It would have to be first run fare if we went down that path.