I’ve gone to Merrill’s Roxy Cinema, also known as the Roxy, almost every weekend I’ve attended UVM, so it was quite a shock when its closure was announced earlier this month.
Late on Nov. 7, the Roxy posted a notice on their Facebook page, announcing that “Merrill’s Roxy Cinema will be closing its doors,” with no specified date listed.
However, prospective movie-goers would soon realize that this unspecified date was immediately, as the Roxy quietly updated their schedule with “closed” typed in multicolored letters the following night.
Several commenters on the post concluded that the closure was due to inadequate funding and apologized for not supporting them enough to stay open.
However, the cause of the Roxy’s closure is unclear.
The Roxy’s former owner, Merrill Jarvis III, would have you believe it was due to dwindling attendance, as he foreshadowed the theater’s demise in an interview published Aug. 21 for Seven Days, where the business owner warned that, “If people don’t start going, it’s gonna close.”
This was in reference to the Roxy’s opening of “Deadpool & Wolverine,” which was the second highest-grossing film of 2024, according to Box Office Mojo’s 2024 worldwide box office webpage.
On the opening night of this Hollywood blockbuster, only 80 of the cinema’s 660 seats were filled, according to the same Seven Days article.
But it’s clear that the Roxy didn’t always have slow premieres like this: the April 26 premiere of “Challengers” led to a nearly sold out theater, according to an April 27 Merill’s Roxy Instagram post.
“Challengers” scored the 34th place on Box Office Mojo’s list of the biggest 2024 box office hits, but it seems like people were certainly coming in to see this much smaller spotlit movie.
While “Deadpool & Wolverine” box office might be a good gauge for another theater’s well-being, it’s not the same for the Roxy which is located in the college town of Burlington.
UVM’s Cats at the Movies program enabled swaths of students to see movies without having to pay for tickets, so it’s not surprising to see summer months lacking in attendance, when a large portion of the viewer base are away from campus.
The Roxy was also lauded for its excellent selection of art films, placing #1 on Yelp’s “Top 10 Best Art House Cinema Near Burlington, Vermont” list.
Jarvis did argue, in his Seven days interview, that this classification hurt the Roxy when a large portion of elderly viewers didn’t return after the pandemic. However, the discrepancy between “Challengers” and summer blockbuster “Deadpool and Wolverine” hints that maybe that “art theater” classification is more representative of the Roxy’s viewers than Jarvis thought.
This isn’t to dispute the fact that the Roxy’s financial situation was in decline, but whether that was due to inadequate viewership or poor management is up to interpretation.
Jarvis himself noted how he was having trouble running the theaters on his own, mentioning how the job was much harder than his father made it seem, according to a Seven Days Aug. 21 interview.
The most probable reason for the Roxy’s closure, however, is Jarvis’s complete disgust with the city around him.
After noticing increasing crime downtown, Jarvis made a heated phone call to the office of former mayor of Burlington Miro Weinburger.
“I’m going to open up a gun store in the Roxy with a shooting range,” Jarvis told former mayor of Burlington Miro Weinburger in the same Seven Days interview.
It seems that Jarvis might very well make good on this promise, as the Roxy’s closure comes with a stipulation that any new owner can’t operate a movie theater in its place, according to a Nov. 8 article by Seven Days.
Instead, the spot will very likely serve as just another abandoned building, the Roxy’s screens unable to serve as anything but a cinema’s specialized environment.
At this point, it seems abundantly clear, to me, that the Roxy’s closure was an act fueled by spite.
When Jarvis closed Palace 9 in South Burlington last fall, he gave a full month’s notice, even offering $1 for everything on the theater’s last day as a special going-away celebration, according to a Seven Days article published Oct 27, 2023.
Meanwhile, a month ahead of the Roxy’s closure, the only signs of what was to come were Jarvis’s vague threats from August and a sudden switch to close on Mondays. Customers were only notified of its closure the eve of its final day.
While Jarvis’s closure of Palace 9 was much more respectful, it’s infuriating to see these theaters go down when other Vermont cinemas have stayed upright under worse circumstances.
James O’Hanlon, who operates the Savoy Theater in Montpelier, recounts losing all the contents of their basement theater space in the 2023 flood, as well as more recent struggles with deficit, all in a Sept. 25 Facebook post.
However, O’Hanlon has kept the theater running through multiple GoFundMe campaigns, the latest of which just reached its $25,000 goal.
“The Savoy is very likely the last true arthouse cinema in Vermont,” stated O’Hanlon in a Sept. 25 Facebook post, where he said he has a passion for it to stay alive.
While it’s true that most theaters have struggled to regain the numbers from before the pandemic, with movie enterprises like AMC narrowly avoiding bankruptcy, in a volatile industry, it’s the responsibility of small business owners to keep theaters alive.
The Roxy’s demise is a scary thing, because it shows just how little agency the audience has in the outcome of the theaters they attend.
While it’s true that theaters have struggled to stay afloat since the better days of pre-pandemic America, it’s a harsh reality that people like Jarvis can close up shop without so much as a single act to combat this decline, in the process making sure no other theater will rise up in its place.
If there is no faith in cinema, then closure is inevitable.
