Fin: The Riverview Returns!

Plus: Misinterpreting “Hallelujah,” a hidden gem on Netflix, a movie about (the wrong?) Mr. Irrelevant, and more in this week’s notes column.

The time my sons got to interview the directors of ‘Spies in Disguise,’ Troy Quane and Nick Bruno, at the Riverview theater in 2019.

By Stephen Silver

On the eve of this week’s start of the Philadelphia Film Festival, Philly’s film culture got some good news: The Riverview is coming back! 

The big, 17-screen theater on Columbus Boulevard in South Philly, formerly under the auspices of first United Artists and later Regal, shuttered during the pandemic and has sat empty for the last four years (except for a September screening of John Sayles’ Brother From Another Planet at “The People’s Riverview,” which entailed the South Philly Autonomic Cinema setting up a projector and screen in the empty theater’s parking lot.) 

But this week, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported that the Riverview is getting a comeback: It will return, still with 17 screens, as a theater under the auspices of Apple Cinemas, a Massachusetts-based concern that has nothing to do with Apple, Inc., and under the ownership of developer Bart Blatstein. There are also plans to set up restaurants and other business elsewhere in the development, most of which sat empty for the last decade or so that the Riverview was there. 

The company, per the report, “touts luxury seating at its theaters and offers gourmet concessions and upscale bars at select locations.” I’m not sure how much repertory stuff they do, but they appear to at least exhibit Fathom Events stuff; it’s also not clear if there will be an IMAX room or its equivalent. 

Regardless, this is great news. As I’ve been writing for years, Philadelphia doesn’t have nearly enough movie screens for a city of its size. And what will happen to the AMC Fashion District theater in Center City if the new Sixers arena is built — which now looks more likely than not — is uncertain. I had thought maybe they would move that to the former Riverview, or possibly to a different part of the building, or that maybe the now Sony-owned Alamo would finally come to Philly. 

Between this and the relaunch next month of the Lightbox Film Center in the Bok Building, it’s a great time for cineastes in South Philly. 

The Riverview has something of a colorful history, as I wrote about when I eulogized the theater after the 2020 closure. Its location made it easy for people from all walks of life to go there, as did the free parking. Naturally, it was once a location in an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, as Paddy’s Pub is canonically just a couple of blocks away.

And the place had a certain charm, even if the popcorn lines were always too long and the escalators didn’t always work. And in an event that made international headlines on Christmas Day in 2008, one guy at the theater shot another for talking during The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, although both survived. 

They’re saying the new theater will open in a year, although if there’s anything I’ve learned over the years about Philly real estate projects, they usually take longer than announced, and sometimes don’t happen at all. But this one sounds like the real deal, and I can’t wait.