Employees at a unionized Alamo Drafthouse theater in Colorado are making good on a threat to strike, walking out ahead of what is expected to be a healthy Valentine’s Day-slash-President’s Day box office weekend.
Staffers at the theater chain’s Sloans Lake location in Denver who are unionized with the Communications Workers of America Local 7777 have begun withholding their labor in protest over layoffs they claim violated labor law, the union announced Friday. The strike will go on until further notice, according to the union, which claimed that the cuts were made not out of financial need and violated “status quo labor protections and good faith bargaining practices.”
“This is not the Alamo Drafthouse we have supported and built over the years. This is Sony, their new corporate owner pulling the strings, attempting to silence our collective voice and strip us of our power. But we refuse to be silent, and we refuse to be powerless,” said union bargaining committee member Josh Reitze said in a statement.
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Alamo Drafthouse for comment.
The move marks an escalation in labor turmoil over a round of layoffs that Sony-owned Alamo Drafthouse conducted nationwide in early 2025. The cuts affected both consumer-facing and corporate employees before what the theater chain believed to be a slow few months at the box office. In at least some cases theater staffers were told they could reapply for their jobs at a later point. Labor advocates have argued that in the recent past Alamo Drafthouse simply reduced staffers’ hours during slow months, rather than terminated their employment.
At the Sloans Lake location, CWA Local 777& alleged in a Feb. 3 filing that the company engaged in unlawful repudiation/modification of the contract and refusal to bargain/bad-faith bargaining as the union was engaged in negotiating a first contract with the company. The company has declined comment on those charges, but an insider close to the company disagreed with the union’s representations and said the theater chain was bargaining in good faith.
CWA Local 7777 claims that data shared by the company predicted that the box office would potentially earn 90 percent of typical numbers pre-pandemic in 2025. “The company’s own financial data contradicts the need for these layoffs,” said bargaining unit member Claude Grossi in a statement. “Their outlook is optimistic, and box office projections show significant industry growth. This is not about economic hardships, it’s about corporate interests overtaking worker rights.”
Now, all eyes are on two unionized Alamo Drafthouse locations in New York, affiliated with a United Auto Workers Local, that have likewise threatened a work stoppage over the layoffs. Ninety-eight percent of participating union members authorized a strike in lower Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn in late January.
Captain America: Brave New World and Paddington in Peru are expected to dominate the four-day weekend at the box office. The latest installment in the Marvel Studios franchise is tracking to score more than $90 million at the box office, while the family-friendly Paddington film is expected to land between $15 and $17 million.