Phoenixville’s The Colonial Theatre teams up with Pluto TV to host free screenings

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The Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville is hosting free movie screenings July 5 and 6 in partnership with Pluto TV’s “Summer of Cinema” campaign.

Pluto TV, a free streaming service, is sponsoring the tickets. The company created the nationwide “Free Movie Weekend” in 2021 to help local, independent movie theaters in the wake of the COVID-19 shutdowns.

Bob Trate, director of programming at The Colonial Theatre, said the historic local business is participating for the third year in a row.

“It’s a fantastic event that enables us to provide free movies, free popcorn, to our patrons,” he said. “What’s great about that is it enables them to come in and fall in love with being in the movie theater again. So we’re just thrilled that we have an opportunity for them to come out, especially the whole family, because we have three family movies that they can come and just sit down, get a break from the world and be able to enjoy watching cinema and taking the kids out and creating memories.”

Anyone can sign up to reserve their seats for showings of “Hook,” “Jumanji” and “Labyrinth” on The Colonial Theatre’s website.

Trate said the films this weekend provide a connection point between family members of different ages.

“What’s nice about some of our movies is they’re well over 20 years old, so the parents grew up with these movies, and now they can share them with their kids,” he said. “I love when I see multigenerational families coming in and all enjoying the same movie.”

He estimated that many of the roughly 200 seats already reserved for this weekend are for the Saturday and Sunday showings of 1986 cult classic “Labyrinth.”

“Everybody is coming to see David Bowie and the Muppets,” Trate said. “So that’s what’s so fun about that movie. And I literally program that movie … once a year, because it always does well.”

For Trate, participating in Pluto TV’s “Free Movie Weekend” allows the theater to expand its audience.

“The important part for our business is that we’re enabling those people who may not be able to afford the opportunity to come out to the movies, or had never heard of us,” he said. “It’s still shocking to me to this day that … the theater has been here for over 120 years … and we are still not known in our own community. So this is an excuse for people to say, like, ‘Oh, I heard there’s a movie theater in Phoenixville giving away free tickets this weekend. Let’s check it out.’”

Trate said the experience of watching a film in the grand old movie theater is a big draw, providing people with “a little history lesson” while patrons watch the movie.

The event is also good timing, Trate said, because it helps promote the theater’s marquee “Blobfest” event taking place July 11-13.

“It’s great to have people coming in, discovering the theater and going, ‘What’s Blobfest? Why do you have all these Blobfest posters up and such?’” he said. “And we also have trailers for Blobfest movies for next week in front of the trailers that they’ll see this weekend.