Center City's Roxy Theater to reopen for real – this Friday
After months of renovations, the Roxy Theater on Sansom Street is set to open this weekend with `Saving Mr. Banks,' starring Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson. The Leonardo DiCaprio starrer, `The Wolf of Wall Street,' and more studio releases, new indies, foreign films and docs are on the way, too.
The Roxy is back. After extensive, and expensive renovations (including a Kickstarter campaign to pay for new seats), the Rittenhouse Square-area two-screen house is set to open Friday, Dec. 20, with the Disney release Saving Mr. Banks, starring Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson. And next week, it'll add The Wolf of Wall Street, the high-profile Martin Scorsese Paramount title with Leonardo DiCaprio, Matthew McConaughey and Jonah Hill. The Philadelphia Film Society, which took over the Roxy after its closure last fall, plans to program the theater in much the same way as it programs the annual Philadelphia Film Festival: a balance, says PFS executive director Andrew Greenblatt, of `prestige' studio titles with a mix of foreign language, American independent, documentary and experimental films, "with some repertory sprinkled in," he reports.
Additional plans include a monthly Filmadelphia screening series, a free showcase for student and local filmmakers, and a return of the Children's International Film Festival (this year's fest was screened at the Roxy, a kind of "soft" opening for kids and families, in mid-November). For info on all the Roxy's programming, its site will be up and runniing tomorrow, when news of the reopening is official.