Hey, let’s open up a drive-in, but isn’t the drive-in dead?
No. The drive-in is not dead. You’ve just got to rethink the execution. Check-out the story of Star-Vu in OC Weekly. It’s about bureaucrat turned entrepreneur Fred Armendiraz who purchased portable outdoor screens from Outdoor Movies and set up a drive-in theater on the parking lot of the Orange County Fairgrounds.
Here’s where the rethinking of the business model of drive-ins comes into play. The portable outdoor screens allows for “temporary” drive-ins rather than “permanent” drive-ins:
“The drive-in never really went away,” says Mary Jean Duran, a D.C. colleague of Armendiraz who now helps him run the Star-Vu. “People never stopped going. . . . It’s just the value of commercial real estate: Are you going to build a drive-in, or are you going to build strip malls and a condo?” In this case, the choice doesn’t have to be made. By day, it’s a parking lot. On weekends, it’s a marketplace. At night, it becomes a theater.
The equipment is not cheap, but the portability of it allows you to virtually set up a drive-in anywhere. You just have to secure a suitable location and get licenses to show the movies.