Like surprises? Local theaters try ‘mystery movie’ nights for a discount
When Sandy Springs resident Logan Holman recently saw a promotion at Springs Cinema & Taphouse for a new Mystery Movie Night, she was immediately intrigued by the pitch: for $5, you enter a theater with no idea what you’re going to see until the film begins.
“I like surprises,” said Holman, who joined her her husband Jeff on a Monday date night.
Logan said she was open to any film genre except horror. “If it had been horror,” she said, “we would have walked out and gotten sushi.”
Fortunately, she was happy with the film that popped up on screen: “Eternity,” a fantasy romantic comedy where a character played by Elizabeth Olsen must decide in the afterlife whether to spend eternity with her first love who died in the Korean War (Callum Turner) or the man she was married to for 65 years (Miles Teller).
The movie, scheduled for wide release in theaters Nov. 28, was offered to Springs Cinema specifically for a Mystery Movie Night as a way to spread buzz for the film. “Eternity” is a genre that seldom lands in movie theaters anymore.
Springs Cinema owner Brandt Gully had already screened “Eternity” and liked it.
“This (mystery film) concept has been floating around recently,” Gully told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We’ve had others approach our film buyer with this idea, but we did not want our first one to be a crappy film. ‘Eternity’ was right up our alley. It’s got star power. It’s got a unique story.”
In the end, Gully deemed the experiment a success, selling 100 tickets on two screens, which he said is excellent for a Monday.
He said he received seven or eight positive emails from attendees after the screenings.
“We enjoyed the experience,” said Jim Squire, a Sandy Springs resident who camewith his wife Donna. “It was a good price for a movie and we liked how friendly and helpful the staff was.”
And the Squires helped the theater’s bottom line by spending $70 on food and drink including chicken quesadillas, funnel cake fries, a tangy tender melt, popcorn and drinks.
Gully is willing to try it again with Springs’ next Mystery Movie Night set for Monday, Dec. 15. “I already know what it is and it’s also a movie I really like,” he said. “My goal is for customers to feel like these movies are being curated for them. If we accomplish that, they’ll come back.”
Other local theaters are also working the surprise element. Milwaukee-based Marcus Theatres holds $6 Marcus Mystery Movie every other Monday, typically the slowest night of the week. It has three theaters in metro Atlanta: Movie Tavern in Roswell and Tucker and Horizon Village Cinema in Suwanee.
The only information Marcus provides in advance is whether the film is rated PG, PG-13 or R.
“Not even our theatre staff knows which movies will be playing, so it’ll be a surprise for everybody!” the Marcus website notes. (A Marcus spokesperson did not respond to an email seeking additional comment.)
Christopher Escobar, who owns the Plaza and Tara theaters in Atlanta, said he began trying mystery movie nights using older films in early 2023, first with “No Country for Old Men” at the Plaza.
“We drop hints on social media as to what it may be in advance,” he said.
He considers it a “repeatable idea” but “not a home run” in terms of pulling in regular audiences.
Gully has faced multiple challenges since he purchased the Sandy Springs theater from legendary local theater owner George LeFont in 2017 and invested $2.5 million renovating it with plush seats, liquor and beefed up food options.
The pandemic pushed people to streaming services. Movie theaters have yet to recover, with attendance dropping in the United States and Canada from 1.23 billion tickets sold in 2019 to 762 million last year, a drop of 38%.
Gully said he tries to come up with creative ways to fill seats.
Springs still holds drive-in movies in the parking lot, a successful vestige from the pandemic.
He also hosts regular Popcorn & Pajamas screenings to draw families in with films like Jim Carrey’s 2003 live action “The Cat in the Hat.” He attracts women with Movies & Mimosas featuring romcoms like the 1998 Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan classic “You’ve Got Mail.” He recently tried a new concept to draw men dubbed Machorama with “Braveheart,” “Pulp Fiction” and “Dog Day Afternoon.”
“We try hard to be ingrained in the community and set ourselves apart from the typical movie theater,” Gully said.
While October was the worst monthly domestic box office total in 27 years excluding the pandemic, Gully said he actually saw box office receipts go up 11% compared to October 2024.
Several films performed better recently at Springs Cinema than neighboring theaters, Gully said, including romance “Regretting You,” biopic “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” and historical drama “Nuremberg.”
Gully said the rest of the year looks promising. The second “Wicked” movie “is like the Super Bowl for us,” he said. And December includes not only features blockbusters like the new “Avatar” film but promising films such as “Hamnet,” “The Housemaid” with Sydney Sweeney and “Song Sung Blue” starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson.
“We have a killer holiday lineup,” Gully said. “It’s just so full of good films. I just wish they’d spread them out a little more.”
About the Author
Rodney Ho writes about entertainment for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution including TV, radio, film, comedy and all things in between. A native New Yorker, he has covered education at The Virginian-Pilot, small business for The Wall Street Journal and a host of beats at the AJC over 20-plus years. He loves tennis, pop culture & seeing live events.
