01/10/2026
“I want it to be real.”
So said Paige, one of our managers, when I asked her if the outpouring of support in the last six days was something bankable and different.
The Eagle team is feeling a bit like the alleged hypochondriac who died and had this inscription on his tombstone: “I told you I was sick.”
Here’s where we are and what’s next—and insert apology here, because it takes me at least 750 words to make a point. Twitter and social media have not been kind to those of us trained to engage in paragraphs rather than hot takes.
This morning we passed 4,500 people who said via survey they would commit to seeing a movie a month at one of our three theaters.
That was our goal to continue the fight to reopen—and this is us doing just that.
If you haven’t yet and want to be part of this next step, please take the survey.
It’s how we test whether this support is real—and whether it changes what happens next.
(The link is at the end of this post.)
Imagine a quest with six or seven gates, each guarded by poisonous plants, alligators, and Greek choruses of pessimism and snark.
The latter take a perverse pleasure in sharing their absolute certainty that (pick one or more):
A. Good movies are not to be had
B. We are tiresome wankers
C. Movies are best consumed on a couch in front of a phone or a big-screen TV
D. The price of concessions should be capped at the retail price of Walmart
So what is Gate 2?
Gate 2 is whether this enthusiasm represents a real, behavior-changing commitment—or just a beautiful goodbye.
Tonight, we will send an email to the people who answered the survey to separate signal from noise—or, less elegantly, to see what’s s**t and what’s shinola.
There is national data from Cinemark that estimates how many more movies people attend in a year when they have a financial stake in seeing one movie a month.
If you were investing in real estate to lease a theater to a bunch of crazy optimist community and movie nerds, you would want to know that, right?
Have we simply assembled all the movie fans who already see twelve movies a year and are ready to make it official? Or has this wide net been a wake-up call to people who only see a few films a year but are now ready to get back into the habit? Or—most likely—both?
In a few days, we will have some self-reported estimates of how a subscription would change behavior. That matters. A lot.
Here’s the simple version:
We hit the interest goal.
Now we need to test whether interest turns into changed behavior.
That test determines whether the next gates even exist.
If we get past Gate 2, then Gate 3 and Gate 4 arrive at the same time:
(1) we will make a contingent offer to buy back the theater real estate; and
(2) we will actively work to turn survey enthusiasm into refundable deposits.
You’re getting this level of detail not to make your eyes glaze over.
We need you to understand that this is a serious effort to get Dudley Do-Right to rescue Nell from the tracks at the eleventh hour.
Six days ago, you put some wind in deflated sails. If this turns out to have been a fond farewell as the theaters shuck off their mortal coil, we’ll accept that. But we don’t want to spend the next five years pushing a rock up a hill—and we also don’t want to leave any honest effort on the field.
Clear eyes. Full heart. Can’t lose.
Let’s test reality to see what it really is. We already care deeply—this is not a lack-of-heart problem. And “can’t lose” doesn’t mean we succeed in a business sense; it means we will not be hollowed out by fear or cynicism.
What do you think?
—Eric Gubelman
PS — If you’re not hollowed out, if you have full hearts, and if you want to see your theater reopen, commit—on paper—to seeing a movie a month. Take the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/R2PLKXX
PSS — We angered the algorithm by including that link. If you want this to spread, comments, thumbs, hearts, and shares help.
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CAPTION: Movies make memories, and theaters build community. Here are a few examples to remind you.
