Fans of downtown Warren lobbying to find new operator for theater

WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) - After 20 years in downtown Wichita, screens will go dark after Thursday’s showtimes at the Warren Old Town Movie Theatre. Fans of the downtown cinema want its doors to remain open and that has them lobbying for a new operator after Regal moves on.

Jennie Iseli started a petition to give the theater a chance for a future in downtown Wichita. Leif Jonker, organizer of an annual horror film festival at the Old Town theater, hopes to host the event for a 10th year this year.

Hearing about Regal’s plan to close the Warren Old Town, Iseli and Jonker ended up with the same idea for who should take over.

“There’s one simple answer, man. Great minds think alike,” Jonker said.

That “simple answer” for both is that Alamo Drafthouse, a Texas-based movie theater chain, would be the right fit to take over operations of the downtown Wichita Warren.

“It’s really a high level of execution on every front,” Iseli said of the company.

On Monday, Jonker said he sent a letter to a contact at Alamo Drafthouse that was passed on to the company’s owner.

“Our best chance to reach its true potential,” he said of what new ownership could do for the Warren Old Town. “It will be something it wasn’t even before. They’ll bring so much to it. I believe Wichita would really embrace it.”

Tuesday, Iseli started the petition at Change.org.

“It’s going great,” she said. “Ideally, we’re shooting for [10,000 signatures] because we want to be taken seriously and show that Wichita does want this.”

While acknowledging the effort to rope in Alamo Drafthouse is a long shot, Iseli and Jonker said the Texas company is their first choice and in the end, they just want to see Wichita’s downtown movie theater stay and thrive.

“Encourage anybody, as long as they’re going to give this theater the respect that it deserves, to do it and go for it. But I would hate to see it die out, because it’s a really great theater and a really great asset,” Iseli said.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Iseli’s petition had more than 1,500 signatures There’s also a website dedicated to the effort to save the Old Town Warren: https://wichita-big-screen.blogspot.com/.