Durham movie theater to close its doors this weekend after 29 years
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The screens will go dark for the final time this Sunday at one of Durham’s last remaining movie theaters.
The AMC Classic 15 will close Oct. 29, a representative of the company confirmed. It’s located at 1807 Martin Luther King Junior Parkway.
“AMC routinely reviews the theatres in our circuit, as well as opportunities outside of our circuit, and makes decisions based on what will best strengthen the Company going forward,” the AMC spokeperson wrote in an email.
The dated theater has been operating with a skeleton crew in recent months. The more recently renovated AMC theater at The Streets at Southpoint will remain open.
The closing theater on MLK will show more than a dozen movies on Sunday, including “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” plus newer fare like Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” concert film and Martin Scorsese’s drama on the Osage Indian murders, “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
The property, appraised at nearly $6 million, has been owned since 2005 by an LLC that lists an Arizona law firm’s address. No new plans have been filed with the city yet.
The Southpoint mall AMC and downtown’s Carolina Theatre are the only remaining commercial movie theaters in Durham after Northgate’s Stadium 10 closed this summer.
Opened in 1994
The AMC Classic 15 opened as the Wynnsong 10 on April 1, 1994, according to archives.
The first films played included “Thumbelina” and “The Paper,” as well as the third “Naked Gun” and the second “Mighty Ducks.”
The opening of the 10-screen multiplex prompted the Hope Valley neighborhood to form a neighborhood association to represent its interests in City Hall, it was reported at the time.
“Commercial development has started to crowd the community, and what once could be halted by a discreet call now requires the concerted voice of one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in town,” a News & Observer reporter wrote the month it opened.
The theater added the five screens that turned it into a Wynnsong 15 in 1998, according to bloggers at cinematreasures.org.
