Wilcox Cinema at mall closes

Published 1:26 pm Thursday, September 10, 2015

Vicksburg’s only full-time movie theater closed Thursday.

Wilcox Cinema 6 in Vicksburg Mall closed Thursday effective immediately following a screening of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E” for a senior citizen’s group, mall manager Mike Carlisle.

A new theater is coming to the mall but no date has been set, Carlisle said. He declined to named the theater company, citing a confidentiality agreement.

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Calls to the theater Thursday afternoon reached a recording of show times valid through Wednesday, Sept. 9.

After years of planning, Wilcox updated theater in 2014, adding two additional screens, complete with 60 high-back, padded stadium seats with cup holders. The rooms are off to the left of the concession stand, occupying the former Cyberstation area, and are 32-by-30 feet, as opposed to the 30-by-80 feet dimensions of the older four screens.

The theater opened at the mall on Pemberton Square Mall Boulevard in 2008, after the city went two years without a cinema.

Wilcox was founded in December 2007 with a focus on locating theaters in small communities in the South, according to the company’s Web site. Its two other properties are Washington Square Cinema 4 in Bastrop, La., about 85 miles west of Vicksburg, northwest of Monroe and Hollywood Cinemas 7 in LaPlace, La, about 185 miles south of Vicksburg on U.S. 61 South.

The closing leaves Vicksburg again without a fulltime movie theater. On most weekends, The Westside Theatre Foundation presents foreign and classic films at the Strand Theatre on Clay Street.

In January, Hollywood Reporter reported that the number of moviegoers in North America had hit a 20-year low thanks to the prevalence of streaming online services such as Netflix. Cinema ticket sales for 2014 were about $1.26 billion, the lowest since 1995.

(Staff writer John Surratt contributed to this post.)