Fairview Cinema owner hoping for May 1 reopening

FRANKLIN — Parish Councilman Patrick Hebert of Berwick made an economic development announcement at Wednesday’s council meeting.
The announcement was about the reopening of the Fairview Cinema in Bayou Vista, possibly as early as May 1.
“The response we have received has been overwhelming,” Hebert said.
Councilman Rodney Olander of Franklin stepped in with a question.
“Who’s opening the cinema?” Olander said.
The answer was Hebert and his wife Christen, drawing laughs from the council members and the audience.
They purchased the theater in November with plans to bring it to Hollywood life again for the first time since 2019. And the community has taken notice.
A Fairview Cinema Facebook page that went online last month has more than 4,000 followers. Four posts on the page have drawn nearly that many likes and loves.
“I’ve been in business a long time,” Hebert, a contractor, said after the meeting. “We’ve never seen this much excitement.”
As the excitement grew, Hebert learned the ins and outs of life in show business.
“It’s been an enormous amount of work for something I’ve never been involved with in my life,” Hebert said at the meeting, “except for going to see a movie.”
Family members have pitched in and will work at the theater when it’s open. Grandchildren painted stripes on the theater parking lot.
The projectors turned out to be a major investment. The previous owners sold Fairview’s projectors not long before Hebert acquired the theater. The projectors that will show films at the reopened Fairview cost $80,000.
Then there was actually acquiring the movies to screen for eager cinephiles. Hebert worked with a booker who seemed skeptical at first.
“My booker said, when he first called me, ‘You don’t know anything about the business,’” Hebert said. His response: “I’m going to do it with or without you.”
That aspect of the business seemed to go more smoothly than expected. Hebert said the response from Warner Brothers indicates that the theater will have access to first-run movies, not the second-run features that are often available to small-town and discount theaters.
Small-town, discount or not, Hebert said he’s trying to keep admission and concession prices down to keep a night at the movies affordable.
The Facebook page lists the tentative showtimes at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Fridays, four shows beginning at 1:30 p.m. Saturdays and two shows beginning at 1:30 p.m. Sundays.
Whenever the doors open, Fairview will enter a movie-going world that is far different from entertainment space of a quarter-century ago.
The Pew Research Center reports that sales peaked at 1.6 billion tickets in the United States and Canada in 2002. Installments in the blockbuster Spiderman, Harry Potter and Star Wars franchises appeared that year.
Ticket sales began a downward drift but were still at 1.3 billion in 2019, even with the emergence of digital downloads and streaming services. Then came COVID.
The pandemic closed theaters and reduced sales by 81% in a single year. Sales have recovered, but not completely, with the cash value of tickets sold in 2025 reaching about 54% of the average for the 2000s and 2010s.
“In a year, if it flops, at least I’ve done everything I could to make it successful,” Hebert said.