Theaters | featured news

Some of Hollywood's big-name mobsters joined forces with a Florida-based non-profit Friday to help save small-town theaters. Owners of small cinemas across the country must switch from 35 mm film to digital - or go silent. The conversion requires new projection equipment, computers and a sound system that can average around $70,000 per screen.

Though far from their 1950s golden era, some drive-in theaters are going strong. Movie lovers are drawn by the low-cost tickets and an outdoor liveliness that multiplexes can’t match.

Movie-theater owners responded with outrage to a report that four Hollywood studios signed on with a new video-on-demand proposition from DirecTV, offering movies to rent only 60 days after being released in theaters.

The growth in movie theaters is frenetic, with plenty of room for expansion, but it's not clear how much that might help Hollywood.Not long ago when Zhang Guomiao wanted to see a film, he'd head for the village square.

Federal regulators have granted a controversial waiver to the Hollywood studios that clears the way for them to show first-run movies in the home shortly after -- or even during -- their release in theaters.

Film boxoffices were poised on Wednesday to eclipse 2007's record $9.68 billion in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales with Hollywood eyeing more than $10 billion this year as audiences flocked to theaters during the recession.

The MPAA has previously been critical of the negative effect it says BitTorrent has on the movie industry, but a recent experiment in a Norwegian movie theater shows that it might actually be of use to them.

Singapore has relaxed limits on theaters in an ambitious bid to claim status as a global performing arts city.