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The Quin Theatres reopened under new ownership as Catamount Cinemas in Sylva last July.
Larry Griffin
lgriffin@thesmokymountaintimes.com
David Parlier, co-owner of Catamount Cinemas in Sylva, sounds optimistic about the future of his theaters.
“We may look at adding on some more screens once the recovery continues,” he said – things seem bright right now, with every month improving a little in revenue.
One thing he’s excited about is that they’re getting more choices of what movies they can show.
“The last few years, if you could find a movie, you played it,” he said. “Now it’s, we’ll make room for this one, we’ll pass on showing that one.”
It’s a far cry from how things were not too long ago. Parlier echoed the chorus of many other theater owners since March of 2020 in saying the pandemic had been a hugely damaging force that “crippled” the theater industry.
Add onto that the force of streaming, which saw an unprecedented surge during the pandemic as people had nowhere to go, and for much of the past few years, theaters seemed like they were going the way of the dinosaur.
Catamount Cinemas, located in Sylva in a strip mall next to a Mexican restaurant and an ABC liquor store, is a classic local theater boasting just four screens – far from the bulky regional chains with dozens of screens.
An employee of the theater, only giving the name Alyssa, says the past few years since the pandemic started have definitely seen a downturn in visitors. But some things have gotten people to turn out in Sylva.
“Right now, what brings people out is children’s movies,” she said. “The Mario movie has brought people out, especially around Spring Break.”
She thinks there’s definitely been a change in recent years, though – and things could potentially improve overall.
“We don’t have numbers like we did pre-Covid,” she says. “There used to be a lot of people in here. It depends on the movies. If they keep making good movies, people will come back. It feels like some movies aren’t as good as they used to be.”
The guests at Catamount Cinemas on Friday afternoon, April 28 include Dylan Packer, who said he enjoys the theater because it’s close by.
“I love this theater,” he said. “It’s a big deal not to have to drive 80 minutes to see a movie. I live in Waynesville – it’s 15 minutes from me. It’s good quality, it’s a great spot.”
Other moviegoers, who declined to give their names, say they’re only now starting to come back to the theater – the pandemic deterred them for much of the past several years.
Greg Israel, Parlier’s business partner in running Catamount, said the previous owners of the Quin Theatres closed during the pandemic, and the two of them took it over and reopened it as Catamount shortly after.
“They owned it 40 years,” he said. “[Running a theater] is a lot harder than it used to be.”
Parlier has personally delighted in seeing other companies change their minds on the direction they’d been going in recent years in terms of putting movies on streaming services too quickly – which was eroding revenues as audiences weren’t motivated to go out to theaters if they could watch a movie at home for cheaper.
“There’s been a reevaluation,” Parlier says. “They’re backing up and looking at offering the best of both worlds. When a movie gets done in theaters, it goes to streaming, and the name is more recognizable [because it was in theaters longer].”
While streaming “only added to the misery” of the pandemic, Parlier said the last year or so has seen some big wins for theatrical releases – including titles like “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Avatar,” and just recently, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.”
The small size of the duo’s theaters actually turned into a bit of a cushion against the worst economic effects of the past few years. Because they didn’t have a lot of screens, their costs were low, and they could “be a little more nimble.”
“If we had six or eight screens, the overhead would be detrimental,” Parlier says.
And he says being a smaller theater gives them some more independence and discretion, letting them pay attention to what people want to see and sometimes showing more specialty films than a big chain could do.
Ultimately, Israel thinks theaters still have a place in the world.
“I don’t think we’d invest in it if we didn’t believe in it,” he says. “But it’s been a very long three years.”
Parlier concurs, saying that he does believe streaming is a setback, though not a hugely detrimental one.
“Is [streaming] going to cannibalize some of our audiences?” Parlier says. “It will, to some extent. But I think people want to go to theaters. Not everybody, I understand that. But there’s something to the experience of going to the theater. It’s one of the last places we can come together as a community. I know there’s concerts and things, but the theater is a different experience. It’s an uninterrupted experience – if you’re watching a comedy, you’re sharing that with everyone around you.”