Money Meet Mouths
Brian Welk
For nearly 20 years, the Metro Theater on the Upper West Side of Manhattan has sat closed and empty, despite its status as a protected city landmark. In that time, there have been several attempts to reopen its doors, the ones just beneath an art deco facade. But a potential new buyer has emerged with concrete plans, some serious Hollywood supporters, and the endorsement of a local community group.
IndieWire can exclusively reveal that film producer and veteran executive Ira Deutchman (“Searching for Mr. Rugoff,” founder of CineCom and Fine Line Features) is in talks to acquire the Metro Theater, and his plan for the space has the endorsement of local community group the New Friends of Metro Theater.
Deutchman has also assembled an advisory board of 20 people that includes Martin Scorsese, John Turturro, Ethan Hawke, Mary Harron, Tim League, Barbara Twist, and Bob Balaban, all of whom will help secure funding for the theater’s purchase and renovation. The full list of advisors can be found here.
This is great news. But it also leads to an obvious question: why aren't more in Hollywood stepping up to save movie theaters?
Certainly some are, but it feels like overall, most of what we hear is non-stop complaining about the death of cinemas and how dare everyone not support such an important art form. How about instead of investing in various vanity projects or the next great technology startup which they know nothing about and will undoubtedly not be particularly helpful with, what if the Hollywood community instead put their money where their mouths are?
The answer, I suspect, is that many know what unsexy businesses these are to actually run. And hard too. They're not cash cows, and they're not lottery tickets, they're slogs. So their financial advisors undoubtedly steer them elsewhere.
But there is still that pesky cost. Deutchman could not comment on financials, but said the expense of the renovation will be “significant” and that the Metro is a “blank slate,” requiring major fundraising, deal-making, permitting, and construction that he expects will take several years to complete. Cooper estimated the actual acquisition of the theater could be in the range of $5-10 million. She believes it will cost an additional $15-25 million to properly restore it.
Yes, that's not cheap – for one movie theater, no less (though the plan is to put multiple screens inside of it). But again, you band some folks together, as this project is doing, and you can make it happen and work.
And if the belief is truly that movie theaters need to exist for film as an art form, then those most vocal about such things should step up and figure out a way. There are ways to make this all work! Again, it's not going to be some overnight success and it will require a lot of time and investment, but there's a payoff both in saving cinemas and becoming synonymous with the effort. Sort of like Robert Redford became synonymous with Sundance.
You're not going to save every movie theater, and most of them cannot and should not be saved – think: the crappy theaters run by the mega-chains. But these types of cinemas can and should. And there are a lot of them around the world. But their current owners bought them in a very different time and a very different world in terms of the movie industry. The economics are different now and that reality needs to be taken into account or most of these businesses are going to fold.
Studios have started buying up some smaller chains to help hold up their end of the show business bargain.1 An idea I laid out several years ago. Successful individuals in the industry perhaps should do the same. Money meet mouths.
M.G. Siegler
1 Incidentally, Alamo Drafthouse had been close to buying up and/or leasing the Metro Theater -- twice -- before plans ultimately fell apart.