The Screening Room at 13 13 new Wilmington art house movie theater

Screening Room movie theater opens in downtown Wilmington

Betsy PriceCulture, Headlines

The Screening Room at 13 13 new Wilmington art house movie theater

A new downtown movie theater, The Screening Room at 1313, opens this weekend and will shows Oscar-nominated documentaries, animated and live-action shorts.

A new art house movie theater opened Friday, drawing 100 patrons to see Oscar-nominated documentaries, animated and live-action shorts.
The Screening Room at 1313 is starting business by showing the documentaries, animated shorts and live action shorts nominated for a 2023 Oscar.
Co-owners Beverly Zimmermann and Bob Weir have worked together before and had been searching for a new theater location when providence presented them with the perfect space at 1313 N. Market St.
It’s the former Hercules building and now known for its Chancery Market Food Hall and Bar.
The Screening Room at 1313 movie theater

Beverly Zimmermann

Zimmermann and Weir were talking to Scott Johnson, who oversees the redevelopment of 1313 North as head of TSG Hospitality, about their idea when he asked to show them something.

He took them into the building’s former atrium, which included a waterfall running through the room. Now turned off, it left an already terraced space that easily could be lined with theater seats.
Johnson’s architect drew plans for the theater, but supply chain issues have slowed down its construction.
For the time being, The Screening Room at 1313 will open in a neighboring conference room in the lower atrium and instead of rows of seats, patrons will find comfy armchairs and sofas.
The weekend of Feb. 24 will feature a rotating schedule of Oscar short film nominees:
  • Documentary (3 hour run time): Friday 1:30 p.m., Saturday 7:30 p.m., Sunday 6:30 p.m.
  • Animated (90 minutes run time): Friday 5:30 p.m., Saturday 4:30 p.m., Sunday, 12:30 p.m.
  • Live Action (2 hours): Friday 8 p.m., Saturday 1:30 p.m., Sunday 3:15 p.m.

Admission will be $12.50 for adults; $9.50 for seniors/students; and $8.50 for the first show of the day.

The owners hope their website, www.TheScreeningRoom.org, will be up by the weekend, but software conflicts were slowing it down. Zimmermann said it’s expected to be up and running by the weekend of the 24th-26th.

Patrons may pay at the door, Zimmermann said.

Bonus for those patrons: A parking garage under the building has 130 spaces and parking is free for three hours after 5:30 p.m. on Fridays and all day Saturday & Sunday.

While the theater will sell popcorn and drinks, guests also are welcome to buy food in the Chancery Market and bring it into the movies.
Many of the customers seemed to enjoy being able to patronize the food hall, Zimmerman said.
The Screening Room is in the process of getting an alcohol license, so no alcohol is allowed in the theater. It has to be drunk in the market.
Both lifetime movie lovers, Zimmermann and Weir will split the operating duties.
Zimmermann will focus on booking films, and Weir on running the movies.

Screening Room genesis

She fell in love with movies, she said, as a college student. Suffering from insomnia, she and a fellow insomniac would stay up all night watching movies on Philly’s Channel 48.
Weir, who is the technical director of the Playhouse on Rodney Square, last summer opened a two-screen drive-in in Bear.
He worked in projection booths as a teen in a Texas movie theater and a drive-in before moving to Delaware and working in the State Theater in Newark.

He opened the Chestnut Hill Cinema Cafe, which sold food, wine and beer to be consumed during movies, about 25 years ago.

Weir collects movie projectors, including the latest all-digital versions.

He also has a side hustle, showing movies on inflatable screens and has worked with the Delaware Art Museum and The Grand.

Zimmermann and Weir met in 2002 when they helped Tina Betz open Theatre N in the Nemours Building for the City of Wilmington’s Cultural Affairs Department.

They expect to run a lot of independent movies that are unlikely to show up at a mainstream theater and if they do are unlikely to stay long.

Weir said they expect most of their audience to be older and not as likely to want the giant action-hero and fantasy blockbusters that dominate the box office now.

“They don’t want to go to the big chain theaters,” he said. “They want a nice little theater they can call their own.”

Zimmermann said that they have met and know many local filmmakers and expect to screen their films, too.

She already has booked films through March:
  • March 3-5 — “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On,” “Aftersun” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
  • March 10-12 — “TÁR,” “The Whale” and “To Leslie”
  • March 17- 19 — “Argentina, 1985” (Argentina); “Decision to Leave” (South Korea) and “Living” (UK)
  • March 24- 27 — “RRR” (India); “Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro & Robert Gettlich” and possibly a repeat of “Living.”
Weir said he was stunned to hear about AMC theater giant announcing it would start charging for seats based on their location in the auditorium, with the best seats costing the most.
Places that focus on live theater already do that, he reasoned, but The Screening Room won’t be, he said.
He’s sorry the audience won’t yet get to see the theater that Johnson is building, but thinks the audience will enjoy seeing it evolve.
A bonus for him and Zimmermann, though, is that they will get immediate feedback.
“One of the things that somebody told me a long time ago is if you want to be successful, listen to your audience,” he said. “We’re going to have people in and then they’re going to let us know what they think. And we’re going to listen to them and make those changes as we go.”

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