It isn’t hard to walk into a multi-plex cinema wearing comfy clothes to enjoy a movie in a reclining chair. Know what’s easier? Staying at home and doing something similar.

These are the battles that locally owned movie theaters are dealing with.

“In the modern era, probably our truer competition is streaming rather than megaplexes,” said  Evan Fitch, who is the manager of the Tryon Theatre. “The appeal for staying in comfort at home versus getting out, I think that's kind of the biggest battle we're fighting.” 

Yes, Netflix and other streaming platforms have changed movie watching, but there is still something special about laughing along with other audience members during an extremely humorous joke.

In general, box offices have struggled in recent years. According to an Axios story, “the domestic box office brought in roughly $8.6 billion (in 2025), slightly above 2024's haul but down 3% from 2023 and down significantly (27% and 24%) from pre-pandemic highs of $11.9 billion and $11.4 billion in 2018 and 2019, respectively.”

While Western North Carolina has several large multiplexes, it also has several locally-owned venues to watch movies.

To compete with those larger venues - and people’s desire to watch at home - these small businesses offer something a little different. 

“From a price point we know we're competing with the reclining comfortable chair that I have in my house,” said Asheville Pizza and Brewing Company owner Mike Rangel, who oversees the brewery and movie theater on Merrimon Avenue in Asheville. “We're trying to stay at an affordable price, because we still, even to this day, have people that walk in and say, 'Oh, I thought it was three dollars.' Eight dollars is our max ticket price for anything and we don't charge extra for 3-D and then we really try to hammer the experience by making it more fun. By having a more creative atmosphere, free movie programming, and, obviously, a more robust and better menu than you would find at other places along with really great beer, we want to make it more of an experience.”

Something similar is happening in Mars Hill where another brewery has jumped into the movie-showing experience. Scott Spurill owns Mars Theatre Brewing Company, which he runs out of a 1947-built movie theater. He’s added old reels and movie-centric artwork to the walls as he hopes to fill the 99-seat space.

Spurill views his enterprise as more of an entertainment center, as there’s also a stage for live music, along with weekly movies. He admits that showing movies has been a challenge. He tried to start a movie club with no luck and he’s had nights where no one shows up to watch the show.

“It's actually my favorite part of owning a place is when I get to turn it into a movie theater, pulling all the curtains and dimming the lights,” he said. Spurill charges five dollars for a film, offers free popcorn, and checks with patrons to see if subtitles are needed or if the volume is too high.

His best nights happen when he shows a family-oriented movie, because “it's something the parents can do with the kids … The parents can come up to the bar, kind of take a break from watching a kid movie and have a beer and a quesadilla or something. It's more intimate and more family friendly.”

For Rangel, he misses the days when his theater showed second-run movies. That ended with streaming, as large companies, like Disney, made their own services to exclusively show their films. 

“We opened up as a second-run movie theater,” he said. “When Covid hit and streaming came out, a lot of the access to movies that we used to show, like ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’, was taken away from us because of streaming services. I think it was 2021 when 900 or so second-run theaters in the U.S. closed down, including quite a few in North Carolina. That's when we made the jump to first-run (movies).”

Now, instead of showing older flicks, Rangel’s theater shows new releases a couple of weeks after they debut in the bigger theaters.

There are times when a first-run movie is great and the theatre fills (think: “Wicked”). “When it does well, it does really well,” Rangel said. But there are other times when he gets stuck with a not-so-great film for several weeks and attendance suffers (think: “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants”).

The Tryon Theatre is still a spot where older movies can thrive. Fitch said his town has a good audience for repertoire films, which could be a classic, foreign, art-hour or older film. He even works with the Tryon Fine Arts Center to show a series of eight older films throughout the year.

The theatre, which opened in 1932, shows more current films that are a few weeks past the premiere date.

“The main separation between us and a big box theater is largely going to come down to how the studios prioritize release of titles, and it all comes down to the number of screens you can offer it on for kind of the number of days or weeks,” Fitch said. “A multiplex just has more flexibility. So relative to them, we'll get films a little later.”

Even so, owners say there’s a reason they keep the projectors running. A night at the movies is about more than what’s on the screen — it’s about sharing an experience that can’t be replicated from a couch. As streaming services continue to dominate the industry, these small-town theaters are betting that community, creativity and a personal touch will be enough to keep audiences coming back and the marquee lights glowing.