Netflix is bringing the prized Paris Theater back online after major upgrades, including installing a new Dolby Atmos sound system and the technology needed to play 70mm film for the first time in over 15 years, the streamer announced Wednesday.
New York’s iconic art house cinema at 4 W. 58th Street will celebrate the occasion by hosting “Big & Loud,” a program showcasing classics from across the decades, as well as films for the sonically-obsessed. It runs Sept. 1-7.
The 70mm lineup includes 2001: A Space Odyssey, Baraka, Lawrence of Arabia, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Playtime, Roma and Top Gun.
Dolby Atmos DCP movies being screened in the “Big & Loud” program include Apocalypse Now: Final Cut, Blade Runner: Final Cut, Da 5 Bloods, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Matrix, Memoria — which has never before screened in Atmos — and A Quiet Place. Other offerings include Blow Out, La Ciénaga, The Conversation (35mm), Homecoming: A Film by Beyonce and I Am Trying To Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco.
Netflix plans to use The Paris — much as it does with The Egyptian in Los Angeles — to screen its original movies and host special events, retrospectives and filmmaker appearances throughout the year. (Awards season will be particularly busy.) It won’t operate the Paris as a normal theater and book first-run titles from other distributors.
With over 500 seats, the Paris is now the largest Dolby Atmos cinema in Manhattan. It’s also the city’s sole remaining single-screen theater.
Netflix rescued the Paris from closure in 2019, several months before the COVID-19 crisis forced massive theater closures. The Paris briefly reopened in 2021 before closing the door for upgrades.
The Paris first welcomed patrons in 1948, with actress Marlene Dietrich cutting the ribbon for then-owner Pathé Cinema. The locale originally showed French titles, the first of which, La Symphonie Pastorale, ran for eight months. It broadened its slate of offerings in subsequent years while remaining a haven for foreign-language fare. And it was the first theater in the U.S. to show Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 movie Romeo and Juliet
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