![]() ![]() ![]() Two more are on the way: By the end of 2016, the company will have added a six-screen moviehouse near the 9:30 Club and a multiplex with 10 screens in NoMa. The chain was a pioneer of the luxury movie theater concept in the Washington area, opening its Bethesda Row Cinema in 2002 and a downtown branch two years later. ![]() The in-theater food, which includes caviar-topped potato skins - excuse me, potato boats - isn’t exactly cheap either.Ĭall it the Landmark Theatres effect. Hashemi expects that many moviegoers will stop there for dinner and/or drinks before or after the film. City Perch, run by Wolfgang Puck protégé Sherry Yard, sits just steps away from the theater lobby. Although premium-plus ticketholders can order food and beverages from an in-cinema menu of snacks and sandwiches (or, alternately, carry the food in from the “iPic Express” station in the lobby themselves, if they want to save $9), there’s a second dining option. To be fair, the iPic experience also incorporates a real restaurant. That’s a major investment of time, even if you’re sitting through “ Boyhood,” Richard Linklater’s buzzy Oscar contender, which clocks in at 165 minutes. Hashemi cites another statistic: According to his company’s research, the duration of the average iPic visit is a whopping 4 1/ 2 hours. According to iPic Entertainment chief executive Hamid Hashemi, fewer than 3 percent of iPic’s customers are younger than 21. IPic gives new meaning to the phrase “adult movie theater,” and not only because of the almost obscene level of pampering available. IPic's "premium plus" seats come with blanket and pillow. But for an additional $9 “premium-plus” surcharge - yes, bringing it to roughly the price of two tickets at a no-frills theater - you get all of the following: the same $13 seat, but one that reclines touch-pad ordering from an eclectic menu of food, beer, wine and cocktails seat-side service by a black-clad “ninja” (as members of the stealthy wait staff are known) and a pillow and blanket (which will conveniently double as an oversize napkin when your $15 pulled pork sandwich falls on it). General admission at iPic is $13 for a standard (or “premium”) seat: a 33-inch-wide leather armchair attached to a mini dining table. Within a week of the California chain’s arrival in the Westfield Montgomery shopping mall, Florida’s iPic Theaters opened its own eight-screen cineplex a mere three miles away, in North Bethesda’s burgeoning Pike District. Though ArcLight’s basic ticket price of $13.75 is the highest of its ilk (and still a bargain when compared to, say, $49 to $75 for the Washington National Opera’s “ The Little Prince” at the Kennedy Center), it has some competition. In fact, when ArcLight Cinemas unveiled its 16-screen multiplex in Bethesda last month, a place with a posh lobby bar and old-school ushers, but no box office, the company’s vice president of operations, Stephen Green, described the chain’s competition not as other movie theaters, but - wait for it - opera. Next time you go to the movies, you might want to think about putting on a coat and tie.Īs more high-end cinemas open in the region - boasting reserved seating, concierge desks, cocktails and fancy food - the experience is becoming less and less like an afternoon at the Bijou and more like a night at the Kennedy Center. ![]()
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