Paris Theatre Reportedly In Danger Of Closing This Summer
June 19, 2019, 4:42 p.m.
The arthouse theater offered one film in a luxuriously large setting, just across from the Plaza Hotel.
Photograph of the Paris Theatre's marquee by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/garrettziegler/6694802573" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Garrett Ziegler / Flickr</a>
The Paris Theatre, the arthouse theater across from the Plaza Hotel, may be following the way of other arthouse cinemas: Deadline reports, "[T]he last great single-screen prestige picture palace in New York is expected to shutter in late August, according to the buzz on the Gotham arthouse theater circuit." They note: "Unless something dramatic happens, the last movie that will play there is the Ron Howard-directed Pavarotti. Meaning it might be over for another cornerstone prestige theater in Manhattan when the fat man finishes singing."
According to Cinema Treasures, the Paris Theatre opened on September 13th, 1948, and Marlene Dietrich was the one to cut the ribbon (in the presence of the Ambassador to France) at the new institution. "The original movie operator, Pathe, ran the theatre until 1990," they note. Loews took over from there (briefly renaming it the Fine Arts Theatre) and then it went into the hands of City Cinemas.
Arthouse cinemas have been on the decline, even in a movie-mad city like New York, with Lincoln Plaza Cinemas closing in 2017 and Landmark Sunshine shuttering in early 2018, as the economics of the movie business have shifted to a seemingly binary choice of blockbuster sequels for theaters or streaming services. (A bright spot has been the reopening of the Quad Cinema, now owned by real estate developer Charles Cohen, as well as the arrival of Metrograph in 2016.)
Single-screen theaters are also a thing of the past—the Ziegfeld Theater closed in 2016.
Tom Bernard, partner in Sony Pictures Classics, lamented to Deadline, "When you launch a film in the Paris and it is a hit, that could be one-third of the box office because your film would play there for months, sometimes all through an Academy season... It is just hard, when other theaters throw off the lowest grossing films after a weekend, but places like The Paris, Lincoln Plaza and the Angelika gave movies room to perform and draw audiences. That area is a prime arthouse zone that has generated incredible box office, where a film can be curated for maximum profitability. The Paris is a perfect place to premiere a movie; there are plenty of seats, a balcony, great projection. It’s a terrific location."
We've reached out to City Cinemas and will update when they respond.
