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Local theater’s success threatened by multiplex

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For as long as Henry Stampfel and his wife, Anne, have owned the Malverne Cinema and Art Center — 25 years — neighboring movie theaters in Rockville Centre and Lynbrook have always had “clearance rights,” which gave them first choice of the movies they could screen exclusively within three miles of their location.

Although that wasn’t an ideal business situation for the Malverne Cinema, which is within three miles of both the Rockville Centre and Lynbrook theaters, the Stampfels built a business model that turned their theater into a Long Island “go to” for art, independent and foreign films — a reputation it has enjoyed for years.

With the pending demolition of the Lynbrook theater, however, and its intended replacement by a Regal Cinemas with 13 screens, Stampfel says he is concerned that the new multiplex’s clearance rights would ultimately force him to close his business for good.

Some Malvernites were surprised to hear that the Malverne Cinema needed to worry about Regal Cinemas 13 stealing its customer base. But the Malverne theater does show its share of what Stampfel called “upscale commercial films” produced by major studios, and those releases, he acknowledges, are where he makes most of his profit. “These small art films don’t really pay my bills, as much as I like to show them,” he said.

He devotes one, and sometimes two, of the theater’s five screens to commercial films because it would not financially survive without them. “Right now, I’m showing ‘Irrational Man’ and ‘Mr. Holmes,’” he said. “Both those films are playing in Farmingdale.”

That’s far enough away for Stampfel not to have to worry about competition. But once Lynbrook’s new theater opens — and is in need of more variety for its 13 screens — he believes it will exercise its clearance rights and begin showing films that would otherwise attract patrons to the Malverne Cinema. “At Christmas, when these theaters are busy and showing the same film in two theaters, it’s a different story,” he said. “But I know that during the dog days of September and October, they will show films that I would like to play in my theater.”

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