On a recent trip to the cinema, I found myself annoyed. The person next to me kept sniffling loudly and, even worse, scrolling Instagram on their phone, dimly visible from the corner of my eye. The former is simply an occupational hazard of being around other people, a thing I usually love to be doing; the latter, though a violation of the theater’s no phone policy, still more preferable to the conflict-averse than confrontation. If only, one sometimes wonders, there was some middle ground between full cinema experience and the privacy of one’s couch.
Enter Metro Private Cinemas, a new upscale theater in Manhattan that caters to cinephiles eager to privatize and glamorize the theatrical experience – for a price. For $50-100 a head, you can book a room at the 20-screen complex in Chelsea for a group sized anywhere between four and 20 people. Pick a film from either current releases or a curated archive, select a drink package for an extra $50 each, choose a 12-13 course gourmet meal off a seasonal menu for another $100 a head, and you have a ritzy night at the movies.
The new venue, which opened to the public in late October, is the latest New York establishment to specialize in so-called experiential cinema: movie screenings with an extra incentive – be it a curated scented candle screening or the full amusement park bombast of 4DX – to get people off the couch and into the theater. Metro is on the smaller, curatorial, more upscale end of the theatrical event spectrum, competing alongside the lavishly themed menus of start-ups like Fork n’ Film and the privacy of members-only clubs for a slice of New Yorkers’ recreational spending. “I love being in a huge room that’s crowded and feeling the audience,” said Tim League, the co-founder of the cinephile-beloved Alamo Drafthouse, who stepped down as CEO in 2020 to focus on building Metro. A private room with friends and family, he noted, is “just a different vibe”.
“I think it plays in concert with Alamo,” he added. “If you’re going to spontaneously check out a movie and pop in and get two tickets, we’re probably not your theater. It’s more ‘hey, let’s plan to get together and have a special night out.’”
League first experimented with the concept at a test facility near Alamo’s base in Austin, Texas, in 2017, but did not focus on the project in earnest until the pandemic. It took another few years to work out the kinks; construction took place mostly this year, with Alamo Drafthouse serving as one of its backers. (League is still a strategic adviser at the company, which sold to Sony in 2024 and has since experienced several labor disputes and employee strikes in New York.)
According to League, the guiding principles for Metro, whose vibe leans toward swanky new mansion – wood panels, dusky lighting, a plethora of framed vintage movie posters – were simple: great food, great drinks and great experience, rooted in the Covid realization that “what’s really important in life is just to spend quality time with people you love”.
To wit, a booking at the Metro gets you four hours – plenty of chatting time, unless you choose Titanic – in a room furnished with state-of-the-art reclining chairs, a full dining table and a record player for pre-movie ambiance (with over 900 records from League’s personal collection to choose from). The first 90 minutes or so center the meal designed seasonally by chef Joshua Guarneri, who secured the gig after an audition process that saw candidates design an eight-course meal around their choice of movie. (Guarneri concocted a forest-themed menu for Predator.) At a recent screening of Frankenstein, chipper servers walked my group through a tongue-twisting lineup of delectable culinary treats – fall pani puri, kampachi crudo, periperi blue prawns, to name a few – served family-style, all delineated into shareable portions that, by menu’s end, maxed out four very large appetites.
For an extra $50 per person, said servers will keep an unlimited beverage menu of select wines and craft cocktails – strawberry negroni, anyone? – flowing until movie’s end, when your group can reach a tipsy verdict on, say, the questionable visual quality of Guillermo del Toro’s gothic epic. “The hour before and then the time after, having your glass of wine and being able to talk in a quiet room about ‘oh my god, what did we just watch?’ – that time with friends right after is the magic of the experience for me,” said League.
League is the first to concede that it’s not the most accessible of friend hangs, but insists that the upfront price of $100 is “still a good value proposition” because “when you go out to eat in New York, you very easily spend a hundred dollars on something far less”. (For what it’s worth, the average upscale birthday dinner for my cohort of Brooklyn thirtysomethings does run about $120 per person.)
“We’re much more going-out-for-dinner forward than Alamo, which is more going-to-the-movies forward,” he added. “The goal is, whether you’re wealthy or not wealthy, whether this is a once a quarter, once a year, any time thing for you, is to have what we are offering over-deliver.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, advance press of the venture has focused on the price, landing at a particularly precipitous time for affordability in New York. League seemed unfazed by the sticker shock, pointing out that the room itself, including ticket and unlimited popcorn, is $50 per person – “not that much above what you’d pay for a movie ticket and popcorn in the city, and then you have this private room that’s all to yourself”. (Indeed, a typical ticket plus popcorn experience at the Lower Manhattan Alamo would cost between $30-35.) “It’s an appropriately priced, reasonably fancy meal, and then it’s a slightly higher price for a movie ticket,” he explained. “It’s an approachable dollar figure. But I’m not going to complain about people saying, ‘Oh, it’s a fancy-pants theater.’ We knew that was going to happen.”
Part of the “fancy”, he emphasized, is the customizability of the experience – though Metro will specialize in first-run movies, such as the popular One Battle After Another, the theater will work with clients to craft a truly bespoke experience. One person, said League, booked V for Vendetta for Guy Fawkes Day. Another did Paddington 2 for their partner’s birthday, complete with marmalade sandwiches, in collaboration with the chef. Yet another group late to the game on If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, a highly stressful indie given limited release, chose the Rose Bryne starrer several weeks after it departed standard theaters. “We’ll be the last people playing certain movies,” League noted, at least two or three months past their theatrical window.
The theater also plans to offer more and more specialized menus, once they get their “sea legs” – upcoming events include a mushroom-focused menu in partnership with Mubi for a screening of Phantom Thread, a documentary on Santa Barbara sea urchin farmers with a multi-course uni tasting, and live sport or video game offerings for kids’ parties. The goal, said League, is to “offer in abundance”, in a place where you set the rules – texting or no texting, soft talking or no talking or perhaps, after several glasses of wine each, full talking back to the screen. That could seem ludicrous, or the deluxe experience worth paying $100 for – but the choice is yours.
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