10 Beloved Movie Theater Chains That No Longer Exist

If you love going to the movies, I strongly recommend you do not do a Google News search for the phrase “movie theaters.”

All you’ll find there, repeated over and over, are phrases like “movie theaters close nationwide,” “movie theaters are in trouble,” “a decline in movie theaters,” “movie theaters need saving,” and so on. One recent article about how some small towns have saved their local theaters by turning them into nonprofit organizations claims that the United States lost 12 percent of its total movie theater screens between 2019 and 2023. And that’s in one of the more optimistic recent articles about the future of movie theaters!

The loss more than 10 percent of the country’s total screens in five years lost isn’t even the full story. In the last few decades, many of the movie theaters modern cinephiles remember frequenting as kids have vanished, either because they were swallowed up by the remaining handful of large exhibitors, or because they went out of business entirely.

Now a cynic might say all movie theaters are the same, and if you’ve been to one you’ve been to them all. That’s simply not true — or if it’s true now, that’s only because almost every theater today is either an AMC or a Regal or a Cinemark. Once upon a time, most theaters had their own unique character; their own auditorium layouts and seating styles, their own pre-show policy trailers, and, most importantly, their own hideous lobby carpeting.

Those days are gone now, perhaps forever. To mark their passing, here are 10 popular movie theater chains that no longer exist. If, like me, looking at their names and logos fills you with some sadness, here is my advice. Stop Googling movie theaters, and actually go visit one.