Niantic Cinema To Temporarily Close; Wait For Better Movies

EAST LYME, CT — Niantic Cinema will temporarily close while waiting for better movies to come out, according to The New London Day. The five-screen movie theater will close Thursday and plans to reopen in mid-December.

George Mitchell, president of Niantic Cinema Corporation, told The Day that he blamed the pandemic for a lack of recent quality movies.

He mentioned "Beast" as one of the biggest disappointments. The thriller is about a family terrorized by a huge lion and received an abysmal 38% fresh score from Rotten Tomatoes.

Niantic Cinema wrote on their Facebook page: "We have decided to pause our operations, starting Thursday, September 15. We will re-open in mid December.

"Since we re-opened the cinema last year, we felt the continual lack of quality content to draw the public out to the cinema. We see this continuing through mid December.

"When we re-open, we will continue to honor your Niantic Cinema gift cards, Rewards Cards and passes."

The post garnered 245 reactions and 60 comments. Many patrons said they'd like to see runs of old films or independent films.

The success of early summer blockbusters wasn't enough to keep the theater open. During that time, "Top Gun: Maverick" was released, which generated $683 million in revenues, putting it at the sixth highest-grossing film of all time.

Overall, Hollywood has been releasing fewer films than in the past, partly due to fallout from the pandemic but also because so many movies go straight to streaming. In July 2019, there were 63 nationwide releases in North America; this year the number is 39, according to CNN.