Drive-ins were once the future too. At their peak in the late fifties there were over four thousand drive-in theaters in America, and people swore the format was permanent because it was cheap, social, and fun. Today fewer than three hundred survive. Formats don't die because people stop liking the underlying thing. They die because the delivery mechanism stops fitting how people live. The multiplex had a great fifty-year run. Clinging to it now is like insisting the shopping mall just needs better stores. Sometimes the building is the problem.
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