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Alamo Drafthouse would like you to know that reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.
Tim League, Alamos founder and executive chairman, calls himself a movie crier.
I cried inKing Kong vs. Godzilla!
The past few months have been tense times for Alamo.
Such expansion, though, comes with a subtle but undeniable shift in corporate culture.
I think back to last December and things were pretty difficult, League says.
We were running out of money as a company.
But we successfully brought on new financing.
And were actually coming out of this really strong, financially.
We had a heavy expansion plan in 2019.
And so were picking up those projects.
We ended up closing three theaters.
We got out of a couple of deals that were fairly expensive that we didnt necessarily want to pursue.
Yeah, I understand people hear that word bankruptcy and are freaked out.
But for us, we knew this day was coming.
We acquired this collection of 60,000 newspaper metal ad plates from the 30s to the 80s, League explains.
So theyre going to be on display, this museum of newspaper ads for movies.
And itll be a functioning print shop.
I dont know if it would be okay or not.
Just as a surprise?
I said, No way.
We cant have that.
Youre not fully trained.
In addition to budgetary calamities of the COVID era, Alamo was rocked by scandal last August.
Ill just say that we heard those [issues] and they were deeply troubling, says League.
And we did make it our absolute priority to address.
Some of that work had already begun and is continuing.
I would never want to lose certain aspects of being a mom-and-pop, League says.
So our spirit is still 1997.
But our execution has been streamlined and modernized and improved.
Now that were on the other side of it, were going to start seeing the rewards.
And I think so will our guests.
