Cory & Alyssa Floyd are celebrating their first anniversary of owning and operating the Englewood Cinema. They were living in Tennessee, and Cory had always dreamed of owning a movie theater. He was researching theaters, saw the Englewood location was for sale on a Monday night, called the owner on Tuesday and came to Dayton and bought the theater on Sunday. Alyssa shared that they bought a house in Dayton on the drive back to to Tennessee and put their house up for sale at the same time.
They officially took over on Oct 4, 2021. They are celebrating this weekend by hosting the 27th year of Horrorama:
We asked them what they have learned about running the theater in the last year. Alyssa shared that she’s learned to be cautious of the popcorn popper, having burned herself a lot.
She also shared that working with your best friend and husband is sometimes complicated, but there’s no one else she’d want to spend time with.
Cory shares that the community has been incredibly supportive of their efforts and that he loves how some of the moments he’s been able to share with their customers. He tells of a recent man who explained he’d seen his first movie at the theater as a youngster and he’d brought his young son to experience his first movie there as well. Alyssa loves how all the small businesses in their strip center stick together sharing how one weekend while showing Batman their popcorn machine broke down, and because she couldn’t leave the theater, her neighbor Brent from Home Sweet Home went out and bought them a popcorn maker.
The Floyds said things have been going well, and the theater which was originally a second run theater, but Covid has made the studio’s more willing to work with the independent theater’s and now, for the first time ever, Englewood Cinema is showing first run films. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will be opening there in November. However when they get these first run movies, they have to commit to showing them exclusively for 2 or 3 weeks.
As owners, Alyssa and Cory work at the theater a lot. This weekend they anticipate 16-18 hour days, but both say they love the business and it’s their baby, so their are willing to work for what they call their dream, but it often means naps on the futon in the projector booth. Their long work days don’t leave them a lot of time to explore the Dayton region, but they’ve found some favorite restaurants like Stoney’s Munchie Bar and Cafe Terra Mediterranean Cuisine.
They told me they’d found the 937 event guide and have used it to help explore arts and craft fairs and look forward to visiting the Ohio RenFest next weekend.
Of course I had to ask them about their favorite movies, Cory’s is The Cameraman (Buster Keaton) and Halloween (John Carpenter). “Halloween I love and it was the first movie we got to play here at the cinema when we took over,” says Cory. Alyssa’s is Easy Livning- a 1937 black and white screwball comedy, but they both agree that Whiplash is another favorite. They even screened it for their guests after the 2017 wedding. The Floyd’s look forward to many more years together operating the theater and also hope to have more time to explore their Dayton region.
320 National Road #21
Englewood, Ohio 45322
(937) 998-8188
