Keith Walker (left) and Matt Sconce founded Movie Heroes, revitalizing local movie theaters in the Central Valley using a subscription model. Photo contributed.

A years-long effort to keep a Hanford theater afloat ended Saturday as a deluge of forces from coronavirus to competition from a new casino lead to the decision to shut its doors.

But at the same time, the business model that sought to give the Kings County theater a chance may be keeping a Madera County cinema alive.

Hanford’s Metro 4 Cinemas had “struggled to be profitable for quite a while,” said Matt Sconce, chief creative officer of Movie Heroes. The Oakhurst-based company purchased the theater in 2017 after the previous owner had planned to close it.

Movie Heroes uses a movie subscription service allowing members to pay a monthly fee to view as many movies as they want at the two theaters under the Movie Heroes umbrella. In 2012, Sconce and his two business partners, Keith Walker and James Nelson, purchased the Met Theater in Oakhurst.

Hanford was the only Movie Heroes cinema to allow non-members to see movies, said Sconce, and with 702 members, it was about four times lower than that of Oakhurst. And when the Tachi Palace Casino Resort’s Coyote Entertainment Center unveiled its own eight screen movie theater, Sconce noticed viewership declining.

They had plans to buy a beer and wine license to help supplement sales, but then property owners told Sconce that the they were exploring a sale of the property. Ownership decided to put beer and wine licensing on hold. It was then that coronavirus hit.

They applied for federal relief loans to help keep the theater alive, but they were told that money had already run out.

“So, already struggling financially, no income from beer and wine, and we can’t financially continue to keep it open without going massively, probably bankrupt. We had to close the doors,” said Sconce.

In Oakhurst, however, when coronavirus hit, members were given offers to suspend their memberships. Instead of having monthly payments suspended or canceled, “many, many” members decided to keep their subscriptions active even thought they couldn’t watch any movies.

“They bonded together and did this ‘we’re gonna save the movie theater again’ type thing,” Sconce said.

Sconce believes that once shelter-in-place orders are lifted, people will come flocking back after weeks of self-isolation. “Everyone’s going to want to get out,” Sconce said.

At first, people will be hesitant to sit next to each other. Movie theaters can respond by not overbooking and spacing customers five seats apart. And after a while, things will return to normalcy. Most showings across the nation are under-booked enough that social distancing can be implemented easily, he said. Premiers might be difficult, but planning ahead and multiple showings may be enough of a measure to socially distance and still get tickets sold.