Looking for some rainy day entertainment where you can get out of the house while still putting your feet up? Look no further than Willow Creek, Plymouth’s latest luxury movie theater. It boasts reserved seating in power recliners, full-sized screens in each theater, a full bar in the lobby with waiters that will bring your drinks to your seat, and gourmet concessions like handmade stone-oven pizzas. “We can combine these things into one facility and make it into a really lovely evening, afternoon, or morning,” says Emagine Entertainment managing partner Jon Goldstein.
Each of the theaters across multiple states is decorated to suit the region it is in. In this case, Willow Creek is decorated with a “willow” theme, as well as iconic film images that give it an old Hollywood vibe. “I think that the theater really celebrates the movies just as much as a sophisticated place,” he says.
Many people assume that the shift toward luxury movie theaters is a trend borne out of the recent explosion of video on-demand threatening to put theaters out of business. But Goldstein says that’s actually not the case, but that movie theaters have been in a constant state of evolution and adaptation since the invention of televisions. Twenty years ago, he says, the trend was moving toward stadium seating in theaters across the U.S. “They really figured out that people wanted to see the screen, and not the back
vof people’s heads,” he says.
Goldstein is confident that theaters will continue to diversify, even predicting a move toward a more immersive 3D experience. “Whatever goes on, people will always want to gather and be entertained together,” he says. “Movies are part of the American pastime just as much as baseball, and I don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon.”
