ShoWest Profile: Alamo Drafthouse

posted by Patrick Crowley on April 21, 2009 at 10:00 am

We had the pleasure of sitting down with John Martin, the CEO of Alamo Drafthouse, at ShoWest and hearing more about how the company, and its franchise concept, continues to grow to the delight of food and movie connoisseurs. Now, if you haven’t heard about Alamo, or have never been to one of their theaters, you’re really missing out on a unique moviegoing experience.

Alamo Drafthouse, as the name implies, is a chain of movie theaters that serves both food and alcohol. And while there are many other theaters that do this, Alamo does an especially good job at it. Their food is delicious, and they’ve come up with a nice way to serve drinks without impacting the movie experience too much.

But the Alamo is more than just food and drink. They do an awesome job with their programming. Special events. Special screenings. Film festivals. Retrospectives. There’s always something cool happening at the Alamo.

As just a small example, the Alamo worked with Paramount Pictures to plan a special sneak screening of the new Star Trek film. Moviegoers thought they were seeing a screening of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn with a few minutes from the new film… but, after the film started, the print appeared to break… and Leonard Nimoy (the actor who originated the role of Spock) walked out on stage, and offered to screen the entire new film. Pretty amazing. And it only happened at the Alamo.

So that’s just a taste of what the Alamo is like. A great story (and example) for the exhibition industry. The Alamo, which offers franchise opportunities to exhibitors, is opening its first theater on the east coast in Winchester, Virginia this Fall. The Alamo Drafthouse concept is growing.

We hope to feature a full interview with John Martin in the near future …