Austin's screens are in flux and the nonprofit is the one expanding.

Two Austin theater stories are running at once this summer, and together they say more about the state of theatrical than either does alone.

The Paramount — 110 years old, one of only about twenty American theaters that age still operating — went dark in mid-June for the most extensive restoration in over half a century: roughly $65 million, every one of its ~1,200 seats replaced, plasterwork and chandeliers restored, a reopening targeted for spring 2027, with the art-deco State Theatre next in line. The 52nd Summer Classic Film Series didn't pause; it moved to the State and, for the first time, to the Bullock Museum's IMAX — Jaws, 2001, and a Spy Kids 25th with Robert Rodriguez in the building.

Three is the magic number

Meanwhile, up I-35, the Austin Film Society is doing the thing almost nobody in exhibition is doing: adding a screen. Construction began early this year on a 179-seat third theater at AFS Cinema — built into a former event space, bleacher-style stadium seating rather than excavation (“Building up was the biggest money saver,” senior cinema manager Cody Franklin told the Austin Chronicle), with the house's first laser projector and 7.1 sound. It opens this fall, backed by a $250,000 community campaign with a dollar-for-dollar match from the Still Water Foundation on the next $50,000.

The reason is the healthiest problem a cinema can have: too many films for two screens. Repertory programming holds one, festival partners like Cine Las Americas and the Pan African Film Festival rent the other, and new independent and international releases couldn't be guaranteed runs. “Now films can stick around longer and we can show more things,” Richard Linklater said — and, asked about the expansion at SXSW, offered the shortest mission statement in exhibition: “Believe in the future.”

Why this matters beyond Austin

A city's production economy runs on more than soundstages — it runs on rooms where the crew base watches movies together, where a grant-funded short premieres to a full house, where a festival can rent a screen on short notice. Austin is spending roughly $65 million restoring its grandest room and a quarter-million community dollars building its newest one, in the same season. That's not a market in retreat. That's a bet, placed twice.