Kino Lorber’s Kino Marquee initiative, which looks to help arthouses at a time when they’ve been shuttered in the coronavirus climate, has mushroomed from 12 theaters last week to 150 including Alamo Drafthouse and Laemmle Theaters.

For the price of $12, Kino Marquee is streaming last year’s Cannes Grand Jury Prize winner, Bacurau, on arthouses’ regional cinema websites. Those who pay to watch the Sonia Braga movie, say on the Laemmle site, the profits are then split between the theater and Kino Lorber. The Kino Marquee was launched to enable movie audiences to continue to support their local theaters by paying to view pics digitally during the nationwide shutdown of theaters.

Kino Lorber

Each rental of Bacurau lasts fives days, and there’s a virtual Q&A with filmmakers and cast hosted by BAM which will be available for all to watch on Wednesday, April 1 at 8pm ET. Kino Lorber also plans to offer top films from other independent distributors via Kino Marquee.

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Here’s an example of what the Kino Marquee looks like on LA’s Laemmle site. Kino Lorber is helping each chain build out their virtual streaming web pages. Each theater will then promote to their moviegoing memberships via their newsletters about upcoming Kino and sister Zeitgeist label movies.

Specific movie theaters wills stream Bacurau during specific dates and you can find that rollout schedule here which is constantly updating.

Ken Loach’s festival favorite Sorry We Missed You is also currently available through Kino Marquee with Film Forum in New York, where the film’s theatrical premiere (launched March 4) was cut short by the theater’s closure. Multiple cities will follow later this week.

Kino Lorber President and CEO Richard Lorber said, “We’ve all been thrust into a brave new cinema world. Kino Marquee offers film lovers and the theaters a way to mutually support each other – audiences can keep going to newly released movies and theaters can keep selling tickets to great cinematic experiences online. We offer Kino Marquee as a lifeline to help keep art house cinemas in business and keep the work of top independent filmmakers under the halo of first release virtual screens.”