As movie theaters struggle, Long Island's mom-and-pop screens try to innovate to survive

The Palneri family ventured out on a rainy, cold Tuesday night in December to watch “Zootopia 2” at the Sayville Theater.

The small, independent theater is the preferred movie venue for the family, said Shirley resident Amanda Palerni, who watched the animated comedy with her three daughters — ages 8, 5 and 2 — as well as her husband and in-laws.

"It’s smaller, more family oriented," Palneri, 35, said after the movie. "It’s affordable for us as a family of five and plus. We do enjoy coming here. It’s homey.”

Sayville Theater has managed to reach 74 years of age, despite closing for 20 months during the COVID-19 pandemic, while the number of movie theaters on Long Island — and across the U.S. — shrinks. 

Nationwide, the number of movie theaters declined by 442, or 10%, to a preliminary estimate of 3,972 in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the number in 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest data. On Long Island, the number of movie theaters, excluding drive-ins, declined by 10, or 25% percent, to 30 between 2019 and 2024, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest data.

Industry analysts say the decline stems from several overlapping forces. The rapid growth of streaming platforms, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, has changed how audiences consume new releases — many of which are now available online within weeks of hitting theaters.

COVID-19 pandemic-related shutdowns accelerated that shift, while studios’ shorter exclusive theatrical windows — now often between 14 and 45 days — have further eroded attendance and concession sales.

Consumers are increasingly seeing streaming as providing more convenience and value than going to theaters, especially for families, as movie ticket prices and concession food and drink costs rise, industry experts said.

A September AP-NORC survey found that 75% of adults had streamed a recently released movie over the prior year rather than watching it in a theater.

At the same time, the lingering effects of the 2023 Hollywood writers’ strike have reduced the number of blockbuster films reaching the big screen, further squeezing ticket sales.

Small, independent theaters are struggling more because they don't generate enough revenue to cover rising expenses, such as employee wages, utilities and insurance, and many can't afford to add higher-end amenities to their theaters, such as stadium seating, reclining chairs and restaurant-style hot food, to compete with larger chains, theater industry experts said.

The closings of small theaters can be significant losses for the towns and neighborhoods they serve because they are often part of the "fabric of communities," said Andrew Goldman, an adjunct lecturer who teaches film production at New York University.

The theaters tend to be located near other mom-and-pop businesses, building a network of shops that feed one another’s foot traffic, said Goldman, who is also the head of content pipeline at media investment firm Phanes Funding Group and a former HBO executive. 

The closing of a theater "can have a ripple effect as the people go to the movies, they sometimes have a meal before or after [at restaurants], which impacts the infrastructure of a neighborhood. The surrounding businesses will be impacted as the movie theater, which usually has hundreds of seats, is a destination," he said.

'We've changed'

 Massapequa couple Henry and Anne Stampfel have felt the industry's contraction firsthand. Since spring 2024, the longtime theater operators have ended their leases at two of the three cinemas they ran.

The theaters' revenue “never really recovered after COVID, so it was a bit of a struggle,” Anne Stampfel said.

 The couple began operating the one-screen North Shore Towers Cinemas in Queens, near the Nassau County border, in 2015.  It closed in May 2024 after the landlord didn't renew the lease for the theater, which is at North Shore Towers & Country Club luxury co-op apartments. 

 The theater re-opened in January — operated by a nonprofit organization, the Cinema Arts Centre, which pays monthly rent for the Queens theater and has a three-screen venue with a cafe in Huntington that opened in the 1970s.

Now, North Shore Towers Cinema offers first-run movies, most of which are arthouse flicks, and classic films, as well as hosting ticketed live events, such as film festivals and presentations by film scholars, historians and directors, said Dylan Skolnick, co-director of Cinema Arts Centre.

There also are plans to start selling memberships to North Shore Towers Cinema next year that would would offer perks, such as advanced ticket sales and discounts on programs, similar to what is offered at the Huntington theater, he said.

"Once people become members, they feel a connection.  It becomes like their cinema.  It strengthens the bond.  The whole thing is sort of designed to create a community," he said.

The pandemic changed people's movie-going habits, so theaters have to do more to get people in the door, Skolnick said.

North Shore Towers residents and non-residents are pleased with the direction the theater has taken by offering live events and more diverse content, said Linda Rappaport, on-site real estate broker for the complex.

Before the pandemic, the Stampfels’ five-screen Malverne Cinema & Art Center, which they bought in 1990, was being challenged by competition from a 13-screen Regal theater that opened 1½ miles away in Lynbrook in 2018, Anne Stampfel said.

When the couple could not reach an agreement on a lease renewal with the landlord for the Malverne theater, they closed it in September 2024, she said.

The increasing cost of doing business, including higher minimum wages for employees, insurance, utilities and taxes, also were issues in their theater operations, the Stampfels’ said.

And even after the pandemic ended, consumers never returned to their previous movie-going habits, Henry Stampfel said.

“The reality is that we’ve changed the way we are entertained," he said. "People still go to the movies with the kids. … But it’s not as many as there used to be."

Like the North Shore Towers Cinema, the Malverne Cinema & Art Center will soon be home to a nonprofit operation.

Malverne resident Nick Hudson, who is executive director of the nonprofit Entertainment 2 Affect Change, and Marie Dente, whose Lynbrook-based nonprofit, Dente’s Dreamers, produces inclusive stage shows, are collaborating to open the theater in the spring.

It will operate as a hybrid community space, have annual memberships, accept donations, offer space rentals for live events, present educational and community programming, and movies to diversify its income streams, Hudson said.

Among the theater's five auditoriums, two screens will be removed so those rooms can be used as stages and one screen will be removed so the room can be converted to a coffee shop/bar, Dente said.

The goal is for the theater to be hyperlocal, reflecting what the community wants to see, Hudson said.

"There are all these little things that, when added up ... incrementally, they equal a potentially sustainable business, not necessarily a very profitable one.  But in the nonprofit model, you don't have to be very profitable. You just have to be sustainable," he said.

The Stampfels still have one theater left, the one-screen Bellmore Movies and Showplace, which is more than 100 years old. The business, which they took over in 1986, is helped by the fact that the Stampfels have owned the building since 2001, so there are no rising rent payments, they said.

To bring in additional sources of revenue, they have added live events, such as speaking engagements by TV actors and performances by dance troupes and tribute bands, they said.

But for many other operators on Long Island who could not pivot or own their real estate, the post-pandemic economics proved insurmountable.

 On Long Island, some of the other theaters that have closed in recent years include the Showcase Cinema de Lux Broadway at The Shoppes on Broadway, formerly called Broadway Commons mall, which closed in Hicksville.

The 12-screen theater closed Jan. 5 after nearly 30 years there. Its operator, Showcase Cinemas, told Newsday it had chosen not to renew its lease.

Also, the six-screen Seaford Cinemas closed in April after nearly 25 years of operation.

Long Beach Cinemas, a four-screen venue that had closed and reopened twice after Superstorm Sandy in 2012, closed permanently in 2023. About half of the space has been leased to two incoming eateries, Chipotle Mexican Grill and Jersey Mike's Subs, said Doug Weinstein, an executive vice president in the Woodbury office of Ripco Real Estate who is managing leasing for the property.

Soundview Cinemas, a six-screen theater in Port Washington that closed in 2021, is set to become a fitness center, the Training Station At hletic Club, that is relocating.  The gym will open in its new location in November, said Jason Sobel, a vice president at Ripco Real Estate LLC who manages leasing at the Soundview Marketplace shopping center.
 

Movieland Cinemas, a seven-screen theater in Coram, closed in 2023.

An industry reinventing itself — or else

Most of the movie theaters in North America are mom-and-pop operations, but four large companies — AMC Entertainment Inc., Regal Cineworld Group, Cinemark Holdings Inc. and The Marcus Corp. — account for about 60 percent of industry revenue, said Phil Contrino, director of media and research at Cinema United, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group for movie theater operators.

While the majority of theater closings in recent years have been of independently operated venues, the nation’s largest chains have not gone unaffected.

AMC, the largest theater chain in the nation, had a net loss of $298.2 million in the third quarter of this year and a net loss of $20.7 million in the same period last year.

The chain's performance this year was mostly due to "the timing of major studio film release dates, a weak first quarter was followed by a blazing hot second quarter, which then was followed by a softening third quarter,” Adam M. Aron, AMC’s president and CEO, told analysts on a Nov. 5 earnings call.

Since September 2024, AMC has closed 18 theaters, leaving 856 theaters globally, including eight on Long Island.

Leawood, Kansas-based AMC did not respond to Newsday's requests for comment.

Though the movie theater industry is being challenged, it remains resilient, said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Comscore, a media analytics company.

Revenue expectations are big for some end-of-year sequels, such as “Wicked: For Good” and “Zootopia 2,” both of which were released in late November, as well as the horror movie “Five Nights at Freddy's 2" and sci-fi flick “Avatar: Fire & Ash,” which are December releases, he said.  

 

 But older theaters are at risk of closing if they fail to renovate and innovate, said Daniel Loria, senior vice president of the theatrical ecommerce firm The Boxoffice Co. in Ridgefield, Connecticut.  

“That … old-style movie theater model from many, many years ago really doesn't cut it anymore," he said. "I think there needs to be an amount of investment and an amount of attention to hospitality, the movie-going experiences that audiences expect now."

Even selling alcohol in theaters has gone from being shocking to standard in the last 20 years, he said. 

Since taking over the Sayville Theater in 2023, the Fickling family has spent a “couple hundred thousand dollars” on renovating the four-screen theater, including adding a new air conditioning system, laser projectors, movie screens and carpets, theater manager Devin Fickling said. 

“We’ve really brought new life into the place," he said.

His family’s Landmark Plaza Properties Corp. has owned the building since 1991.

Opened in 1951, Sayville Theater had several operators before the Fickling family..  

To boost the theater's revenue, the Ficklings' acquired a liquor license in 2023 to sell beer and wine and, last year, the theater began selling $100 packages that include dinner for two at a local restaurant and two movie tickets, he said.

Also, there has been an increase in its theater rentals for birthday parties and other special events, he said.

At this point, about 40% of Sayville Theater's revenue comes from movie ticket sales, while the rest comes from food and drink sales; renting out space for special events; and hosting nonprofit organizations’ fundraising movie nights, he said.

To sustain the theater, Fickling is focusing on giving movie-goers what they can’t get from streaming movies on their cell phones or TVs at home, while providing better in-theater experiences, he said.

“So, that’s the changing world," he said. "And some of these other theaters just aren’t able to adapt. But fortunately, we are OK."

Queens resident Joshua Cox, 21, and his girlfriend, Keesha Charles, 24, are regular movie-goers at the Sayville Theater, though there are larger theaters closer to their homes.

A driving factor in their theater choice is the price being lower than that of larger theaters, said Cox, citing the $15 cost for both of their tickets to "Wicked: For Good" last week in Sayville.

"And the reason we come here is because the price is good.  The movie is just as good.  And the atmosphere is kind of even better," he said.