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While a lot of businesses choose to close in observance of the Christmas holiday, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are a different story. Movie theaters nationwide will be open and most will run their normal business operating hours.
AMC Theaters, which is the largest movie chain in the world, “will be open New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day,” though hours vary by location, so check your local movie listings for showtimes.
Similarly, a spokesman for Marcus Theaters, which has 90 locations nationwide, tells us, “Theatres will be open on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Operating hours may vary at our locations depending on the showtimes for that day. Our box office at our locations opens 30 minutes before the first movie starts and closes 15 minutes after the last movie starts.”
Checking in with several Midwestern Marcus Theaters locations, we found that on New Year’s Eve, there are movies starting as late as 11 p.m., and on New Year’s Day, there are showtimes as early as 9 a.m.
An Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas rep tells us that the Alamo Drafthouses are “open on all holidays and tickets are for sale on Drafthouse.com,” and we received a similar response from a rep for Cinemark Theatres, who said, “All Cinemark Locations will be open New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.”
Landmark Theatres, Regal Cinemas, and Southern Theaters all said similar things, so you can most likely just choose a movie and there should be plenty of showtimes to pick from.
We can’t speak to small theater chains that only have a handful of locations, like Cobb Theatres, EPIC Theatres, Fridley Theaters, or Galaxy Theaters, so if your local cinema is one of those chains or something similar, please call to make sure they are open.
The current box office is offering several different hits for moviegoers. Black Christmas, Jumanji: The Next Level, and Richard Jewell all opened wide on December 13, while that same date saw the limited release of Bombshell and Uncut Gems. December 20 saw the wide release of Cats and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and Christmas Day saw the release of 1917, Little Women, Spies in Disguise and the wide release of Uncut Gems.
There are also a few holdovers from early December/late November releases: the animated hit Frozen 2, murder mystery Knives Out, and the Fred Rogers documentary starring Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood all may still have some New Year’s Eve/Day showtimes.
The only movies that opened December 27 were Clemency, a drama starring Alfre Woodard as a prison warden, and Apparition, a horror movie starring Mena Suvari and Kevin Pollak about a group of teens who visit an abandoned castle. They both opened in limited release the Friday before New Year’s. No new movies open on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day; moviegoers will have to wait until Friday, January 3, for the release of the new version of The Grudge to get anything new at their local cinema.
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