By Canada Day, Toronto will have roughly half the number of repertory cinemas it does now, and if business doesn't improve, that number could be halved again in short order.
The Revue, the Royal and the Kingsway are all slated to close by the end of June. The Fox and the Paradise, the other two independents belonging to the Festival Cinemas Group, are also under threat.
Their owners say the recent practice of releasing DVDs earlier and earlier -- as well as the long-standing competition from the multiplexes -- is making it too difficult to stay in business. Now, as staff and customers mourn the loss of three landmark cinemas, the question remains: Is this the end of Toronto's vibrant rep-house scene?
Kate McQuillan, owner of the three cinemas slated for closing, says the decision was difficult, but "it's just too tough an industry."
She and her two brothers inherited the theatres when their father, Peter McQuillan, died in October, 2004. They tried to learn the business and compete, she says, but it proved too difficult.
"It was really my father's passion," she says. "It's a labour of love and you don't do it unless you're really passionate about it."
Jerry Szczur, who owns the Fox and Paradise and helped to start Festival Cinemas Group 30 years ago, says he is considering selling his two cinemas and retiring. "Their problems are my problems too," he says, referring to the McQuillans. "It's not like it used to be."
In the mid-1970s, he and partners Tom Litvinskas and Peter McQuillan opened the Kingsway on Bloor Street West. The Revue and the Fox soon followed.
"The heyday was the most beautiful time, believe me," says Carmelo Bordonaro, who joined the others to buy the Bloor at Bloor and Bathurst in 1979. Opening night sold out on 99-cent tickets for Eraserhead, the first film it screened.
Over the past 20 years, the multiplexes have multiplied, and quick turnaround DVDs have meant that rep cinemas now often show second-run films that are already on store shelves.
In order to compete, some theatres, like the Royal and the Bloor, found niches by opening their doors to the Toronto festival circuit. The Revue introduced infant-friendly "mini-matinees" to accommodate the influx of young families to the Roncesvalles area.
The Royal, a mid-sized theatre with 450 seats, also rents its space in two-hour time slots, costing $500 to $850, for community groups and indie filmmakers who wouldn't ordinarily have their films touch the big screen.
But the efforts proved unequal to the challenges of the marketplace.
Last month, Camera, a new Queen Street West bar-cinema experiment partly owned by Atom Egoyan, stopped its daily screenings. The ones that remain, such as the Bloor, the Regent and the Mount Pleasant, are seeming more like survivors than thrivers in an increasingly unworkable market.
The Royal building is up for sale with a $2.7-million price tag. The McQuillans are letting the lease run out on the Revue, a property they don't own. As for the Kingsway, at Bloor and Royal York Road, their options include leasing it, transforming it into a live theatre, or putting it up for sale.
"Everything's on the table. Nothing's been turned down at this point," Ms. McQuillan says.
Mr. Szczur is also weighing whether to lease out his Beaches Fox cinema and the Paradise at Bloor and Dufferin Streets, or sell both businesses altogether.
Tim Bourgette, who has managed several of the Festival cinemas over the past decade, isn't giving up yet. "I'm hoping somebody -- a white knight, perhaps? -- will come in and try and save repertory cinema in Toronto," he says.