The Hottest New Concert Venue: Your Local Movie Theater

For now, she’ll have to get her concert fix in a movie theater.

Ms. Green and her boyfriend watched a taped Florida Georgia Line concert on a recent Saturday night on a movie screen in Los Angeles. Hundreds of thousands of fans showed up for the same concert, shown one night only, at movie screens across the country.

After more than a year of musicians putting on virtual tours and drive-in shows, the concert industry is tapping into multiplexes and local cinemas to draw fans back. Encore Live LLC, which brought sets by Metallica, Garth Brooks and Blake Shelton to drive-ins during the pandemic, has teamed up with Trafalgar Releasing to start also bringing one-time shows by Bon Jovi, Florida Georgia Line and other stars to more than 400 indoor theaters in the U.S. and more than 1,000 international locations.

More than a dozen other concert shows are planned for this summer through next spring.

It is a marriage of the moment. As the U.S. emerges from the lockdown haze, fans are still cautious about writhing in a steamy horde to take in their favorite rocker. Big stars won’t make enough money to make a tour of partially full, socially distant arenas worthwhile, and movie theaters are still struggling to draw in consumers. So, what began as a stopgap has grown into a world-wide entertainment offering executives are hoping somewhat replicates the live event.

“I was surprised by how wonderful it was on a sensory level—to smell the popcorn and hear people crunching,” said Ms. Green, 53.

A few rows ahead, Samantha Beatty was enjoying her space. She had plenty of room to dance with open seats around her. (The show took place when limits on capacity were still in effect. Most theater chains have now largely dropped them.) The 25-year-old country music fan came decked out in a yellow flowered sundress, jean jacket and cowgirl boots.

“I’m an antisocial-type person so it was nice to not have a bunch of people in my face,” she said. Plus, “it was nice not to struggle for parking like you usually do at a concert.”

The upbeat tune “Get Your Shine On” got Ms. Beatty and her companion up out of their seats and swaying. “I don’t really know what I expected but it was better than what I expected,” she said.

On screen, singers Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley—backed by a full band and with flames shooting up behind the stage—crooned their way through an hour-plus set. They broke only to allow a special guest, the rapper Nelly, to take the stage for a few songs after he joined Florida Georgia Line for a rendition of the hit song “Cruise.”

He also performed another hit, “Hot in Herre,” and the cameras on the musicians, who performed the concert in advance with no live audience, meant every fan’s ticket was close enough to see them sweat. The show was taped at the Steel Mill, a room for rehearsals, filming and special events, in Nashville.

Mr. Hubbard spoke to the audience directly. “We hope you’ll give us a lot of grace,” he said.

“Even though we weren’t able to perform and vibe off a live crowd,” he said after the show, “we hope our energy comes through the big screen.” The concert was also shown at more than 300 drive-ins the same night.

Before the onset of the coronavirus, the global live-music business was on a tear, with 2020 projected to be the biggest year ever for concerts in revenue and attendance. Instead, global live revenue dropped 75% to $6.5 billion from about $26.1 billion in 2019, according to media and tech analysis firm Midia Research.

Malti Sharma, a Bon Jovi superfan, has seen the band live upward of 50 times—traveling to France and England, sometimes seeing as many as eight shows on a single tour.

She was bummed when last summer’s Los Angeles tour dates were canceled, but settled for seeing her favorite music late last month at the IPIC movie theater in Pasadena. It wasn’t a rowdy crowd, she said—likely owing to the theater’s reclining seats and dinner service—so there wasn’t the dancing, jumping and singing typical of a Bon Jovi concert. But she got to enjoy a quesadilla, popcorn and two Manhattans.

Also, “it was better on my pocketbook,” she said. Ms. Sharma, who shelled out (and was refunded) around $1,300 for her third-row VIP ticket for a Bon Jovi show that was canceled, spent about $20 this time. Depending on location, tickets for these concerts cost between $15 and $20.

While concert films have been shown in theaters in the past, these shows are taped specially for the screenings—which air on the same night in markets across the country. Bon Jovi filmed just days before at the Paramount Theatre on the Asbury Park boardwalk in New Jersey.

“This sort of content, if not in a major arena, still needs to be consumed in a communal environment,” said Walter Kinzie, chief executive of Encore. “Could I stream to someone’s house? Sure, but it’s not the same when watching from your couch.”

Over 200,000 tickets were sold for Bon Jovi’s May show in the U.S. Encore says the show is on pace for nearly 600,000 fans to attend after screenings in international markets, with a box office potential upward of $15 million.

“They’re coming back because they’re fans of Bon Jovi, but they’re engaging with local cinema again,” said Marc Allenby, chief executive of Trafalgar Releasing.

More than a year of shutdowns and capacity restrictions decimated the movie-theater business, sending large chains to the brink of bankruptcy and forcing many smaller operators to close for good.

Now that the economy is opening back up, theaters face a fresh problem: a scant programming schedule. Recent releases like “Godzilla vs. Kong” and “A Quiet Place Part II” have registered encouraging—though hardly record-breaking—grosses, but Hollywood studios are still waiting to release their biggest titles, and have shipped a number of films to in-house streaming services.

For the concert industry, it is another way to get more fans to more shows, especially as many arena and stadium acts have postponed tours to 2022.

It is also a way to expand the reach of an artist’s tour, particularly to rural areas that are hours from a typical stop. Next month, Encore will start broadcasting shows on movie screens while artists play live in front of fans.

“A lot of bands want to go on tour but there just aren’t the venues available,” said Mr. Kinzie. “This is an outlet to be able to play this year.”

—Erich Schwartzel contributed to this article.

Write to Anne Steele at [email protected]