Merrill's Roxy Cinemas in Burlington to Close

Merrill’s Roxy Cinemas Credit: File: Daria Bishop ©️ Seven Days

Burlington’s only commercial movie theater is closing. Merrill’s Roxy Cinemas, the 43-year-old six-screen movie house announced the news on Thursday night in a Facebook post that expressed gratitude to moviegoers but did not name a closing date.

Merrill Jarvis III, the third-generation movie mogul whose family has owned the downtown theater for 21 years, was not immediately available for comment.

The Jarvis name has long been synonymous with movies in northern Vermont. At the height of the family’s empire, they operated 13 cinemas, most in Chittenden County. They announced the Roxy’s closure nearly a year to the day after they shuttered Palace 9 Cinemas in South Burlington. The closure leaves the family with one theater, Majestic 10 in Williston.

Merrill Jarvis III and Merrill Jarvis II in 2013 Credit: File: Eva Sollberger ©️ Seven Days

In a Seven Days cover story in August, Jarvis warned that the Roxy’s days were numbered. The possibility of closing it, he said then, “breaks my heart.”

Ticket sales had failed to return to pre-pandemic levels, a shortfall Jarvis blamed both on industry-wide forces and the failure of Burlington officials to address the rise of homelessness, vandalism and open drug use downtown.

Merrill’s Roxy Cinemas Credit: Daria Bishop

He has arrived at the Roxy to find tents pitched across the street, he said, and he routinely painted over graffiti on the building’s exterior. This summer, vandals broke two of the theater’s glass poster cases and threw a rock through the front door.

“Burlington’s a zombie land,” Jarvis said at the time.

The night the summer blockbuster Deadpool & Wolverine opened, it played on two of the Roxy’s screens, but only 80 people were scattered among the six theaters’ 660 seats.

Theaters across the country continue to reel from the COVID-19 shutdown and last year’s writers’ and actors’ strikes. The historically volatile business has been forced to combat a rise in the popularity of streaming with a decline in the number of wide releases, movies that open or eventually play in at least 2,000 theaters.

Even companies with the deepest pockets have struggled. AMC Entertainment Holdings, the world’s biggest movie theater chain, narrowly avoided bankruptcy during the pandemic and restructured its debt in July. No. 2 chain Cineworld has closed about 75 of its 505 U.S. locations after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2022.

“It’s a very fragile business,” Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at box office tracker Comscore, told Seven Days earlier this year. While the number of screens has increased globally since 2020, the U.S. has seen a decline — 7 percent last year alone, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Merrill’s Roxy will honor previously purchased gift cards, passes and theater rentals at Majestic 10. Jarvis renewed his lease for the Williston theater this summer and said then that he planned to run the multiplex for at least five more years.

As for the Roxy, Jarvis said in August that if he sells the building, the terms will stipulate that the new owner cannot operate a movie theater there. Jarvis’ father negotiated a similar non-compete clause when he sold the Flynn to the nonprofit Flynn Theatre for the Performing Arts, Ltd. in 1981.

On Facebook, the Roxy posted news of its closure along with a photo: black-and-white images of bygone movies stars superimposed over the Hollywood sign. Fireworks light up the background, suggesting a finale.

“It has been an honor to be part of this community and to create a space where people could gather and laugh, cry, and experience the magic of cinema together,” the announcement said. “We’re deeply grateful for the memories and connections made within these walls.”

Update: Merrill Jarvis III confirmed that Merrill’s Roxy Cinemas closed on November 7.