Alamo Drafthouse Lays Off 9% of Corporate Staff
Layoffs are underway at Alamo Drafthouse.
Alamo Drafthouse has laid off 9 percent of its corporate staff, which for the dine-in theater chain amounts to 15 employees (of 165 total), a person with knowledge of the layoffs tells IndieWire. Positions impacted include support center roles and technical engineers. The layoffs are part of an Alamo Drafthouse corporate restructuring, the person said, and are unrelated to the company’s recent acquisition by Sony.
Employees were also let go at the venue level, the person said. Our source said those impacted were hourly staff, largely part-time employees. Some were full-time hourly (not salaried employees), and the staff reduction was done on a last-in, first-out basis. The staff reduction is part of the seasonal slowdown that follows the holiday season each year, the person said. The number of impacted staff is on par with prior years, the person said; all impacted workers have been invited to reapply for positions in the spring when the release schedule picks back up.
In a Reddit thread dedicated to Alamo Drafthouse discourse, multiple Redditors stated these layoffs are not typical of seasonal turnover.
Alamo Drafthouse the company recently opened locations in Indianapolis, Boston, and Naples, Florida, and bought back six theaters (one in Minnesota and the other five in the Dallas-Fort Worth area) from franchisees; it is opening two new locations in San Francisco. Those plans will continue, our source said.
Alamo Drafthouse, based in Austin, Texas, counts 35 theaters across 25 cities. Sony’s acquisition of Alamo Drafthouse marks the first time a major studio will have owned a major theater chain in a long time. In the mid-1980s, Paramount, Warner Bros., Columbia/Sony, and Universal each partially owned a major exhibitor at one time or another. Sony previously owned Loews in the ’90s. At present, only Netflix and Disney own theaters, but those are one-offs — historical locations used primarily for events.
Alamo Drafthouse was founded in 1997 by Tim and Karrie League as a single-screen mom-and-pop repertory theater in Austin, Texas. Today it is North America’s seventh-largest theater chain in terms of box-office revenue, with 10 million guests per year and 4 million members in its loyalty program.
Sony Pictures Entertainment purchased Alamo Drafthouse from Altamont Capital Partners, Fortress Investment Group, and founder Tim League.
