The following article is to be read in a Transatlantic accent à la Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn in the Martin Scorsese film The Aviator:
Folks, a moving-picture company is getting back in the theater business. Sony Pictures just bought Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, making it the first major studio to buy a theater in 75 years, per The Hollywood Reporter. From 1948 to 2020, film distributors were not allowed to own exhibition companies under the Paramount Consent Decrees. Then, in 2020, a judge approved the sunsetting of the decrees. “Given this changing marketplace, the Court finds that it is unlikely that the remaining Defendants would collude to once again limit their film distribution to a select group of theaters in the absence of the Decrees,†U.S. district judge Analisa Torres said in a ruling at the time. Sony Pictures is the first studio to take advantage of the decrees’ end.
This follows a 2021 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by Alamo. The chain will continue to show movies from studios outside Sony, and Fantastic Fest, the genre film convention owned by Alamo, will continue to run. Maybe now that somebody else owns Alamo, the mozzarella sticks can cost less than a year of college.