WEST NEWTON MOVIE THESATER MOVIE

“The movies that we get are already on streaming services,” she said, “so there isn’t much incentive to go, especially if you’re paying more,” Ingram said. Although the posters were all for the newest features, Lauren said it was easy to assume that the theater was still closed.

WEST NEWTON MOVIE THESATER MOVIE

She pointed out the beaten-down movie posters, improperly stretched out in the light boxes on the walls outside of the theater. “I didn’t even realize that the Embassy theater had reopened ,” she said. After leaving the farmers’ market in the empty lot behind the theater, she noticed the goodbye message that Johnson had put up on the marquee outside the theater just an hour earlier.

Lauren, a Waltham resident, found out Embassy Cinema was closing two days before its last day. SHORT NOTICE: Landmark Theatres, the national company that owned Embassy, told employees about the shutdown just three days before the Embassy closed. However, she said the biggest factors impacting ticket sales - COVID-19 and streaming services - were out of Embassy or Landmark’s control. Ingram said the theater could have done a better job of “public outreach and being modern,” and explained how it never had a strong presence on social media. Coworkers told her Brandeis students used to come “all the time” before the pandemic. “COVID has really impacted this place,” Ingram said. She’s been working there since December 2021, and said it has never been busy. The news of the theater’s closing did not come as a surprise for Mazzi Ingram ’25, who worked at the theater up until it closed. “They thought if Kendall Square wasn’t doing well, they weren’t ready to open us,” Johnson explained. Johnson said Embassy’s parent company, Landmark Theatres, opened their theater in Cambridge, one of their two Massachusetts locations, and used it as a test run. “Movie theaters have been struggling for years, but really sped it along,” Johnson said.Įven once things started to open back up later in the pandemic, the Embassy stayed closed.

Then, the COVID-19 pandemic delivered a final, fatal blow. Johnson said Embassy, like many movie theaters, had been struggling to make ends meet before the pandemic. He managed the theater as a side gig after he graduated from Brandeis. 3, two days before the theater shut down.

“We had seen it coming for a while, but we thought we had more time,” assistant manager Andrew “Andy” Johnson ’17 told the Justice on Aug. 5, the almost century-old Waltham staple, once advertised as “Waltham’s Wonder Theatre,” closed its doors for good.

West newton movie thesater