South Bay film fans have spent months wondering one thing:
When will the two announced Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas open in Santa Clara County?
Well, that answer was provided — definitively for the Mountain View location and more loosely for the Santa Clara spot — during an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema press event held on Thursday afternoon.
The Mountain View spot, located in San Antonio Center, will show its first films on June 16. Advance tickets are expected to go on sale to the public, via drafthouse.com and the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema app, in early June.
As far as the Santa Clara location?
“We are expecting it to open not long after Mountain View,” John W. Smith, West Coast marketing director for Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, said during the media event held at the Mountain View cinema.
These two Santa Clara County cinemas represent the 43rd and 44th location in the national movie-house chain, which got its start in Austin in 1997 and now has locations in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and, overall, 22 different markets.
Alamo has bought by Sony Pictures in 2024.
Both the Mountain View cinema and the Santa Clara spot, which is located in Westfield Valley Fair, will operate in theaters formerly run by the ShowPlace Icon operators. Those ShowPlace locations shut down after owner Kerasotes Theatres went out business earlier this year.
Many Bay Area movie lovers are already familiar with the Alamo chain, which has been operating its New Mission location in San Francisco’s Mission District now for 10 years. Yet, this marks the first time Alamo has expanded its Bay Area reach beyond the New Mission cinema..
The Mountain View Alamo measures just shy of 51,000-square feet and will have 10 auditoriums, able to hold a total of 1,200-plus guests. The Santa Clara cinema will be even bigger — measuring just over 62,000-square feet, with the ability to hold over 1,500 film fans across its 10 auditoriums.
The Santa Clara and Mountain View spots will be the largest cinemas in the entire Alamo chain, Smith says.
Neither of the theaters will be fully Alamo-ized by the time they open — and organizers say that the movie-going experience will continue to improve over the first few months as they work out the kinks and otherwise make changes.
Yet, they wanted to get these theaters open as soon as possible in order to take advantage of the big summer movie season, which includes such eagerly anticipated openings as “M3GAN 2.0,” “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” Superman” and “The Fantastic Four: The First Steps.”
“We are heading into an amazing summer of film,” Smith said.
At Thursday’s media event, organizers took the time to underscore some of the many things that differentiate Alamo from other movie theaters — and have built the former such a fiercely loyal following among die-hard cinephiles.
First and foremost is the sheer breadth of film that is show at Alamo spots. Of course, Alamo shows the same first-run new films that populate the AMCs and Cinemark screens. Yet, its programming also extends to vintage (and often quite obscure) horror, sci-fi and other genres as well as cool thematic series (like a recent spotlight on the works of director David Lynch), film festival fare and so much more.
“We show a ton of variety,” Smith says. “And we’re proud of it.”
The numbers tell the story best. Last year, Alamo screened some 1,700 different films across its locations. Compare that with the 1,131 movies shown at the vastly larger AMC in 2024. Cinemark clocked in with 849 different films — which is almost exactly half of what Alamo showed. (These figures were provided at the Alamo media event.)
Patrons will also be able to dine at these locations, drawing from a menu that Alamo supporters see as two or three steps up from what you’ll find at most theaters that serve food. People order from their seats from a menu — ranging from — acai chia smoothies to pulled pork sandwiches — and then the food is served right to them.
Draft beer is also a big deal, which one might expect given that Alamo bills itself as a Drafthouse, and the Mountain View location will have two dozen brews on tap.
Another major difference between Alamo and other movie houses is the strict focus on preserving and enhancing the movie-going experience through such measures as limiting the number of previews/trailers, having an ad-free curated preshow and — most famously — a no texting/talking code.
“We take presentation seriously,” Smith says. “We have the highest standards in the industry.”
