Largest Movie Theater Chains in the US: 5,800 Sites, Top 3 Hold Roughly 20%

There are roughly 5,800 active US movie theater sites as of NATO's 2024 industry census. That figure counts physical exhibition sites, not screens. The US screen count sits closer to 39,000, because the average modern site runs 6 to 14 screens. About three-quarters of US movie theater sites are independents or small regional circuits below the top 10 chains.

We use NATO's 5,800 site figure as the hero number because NATO is the trade body for US exhibitors and counts sites cleanly. Orbital's contribution is the layer underneath: which specific 5,800 sites, who operates each one, what their parent or franchise structure looks like, and the named decision-maker on each independent. NATO publishes annually and tracks the totals. We refresh monthly and ship the contact.

AMC Theatres at roughly 570 US sites is the largest by both site count and screen count, per AMC's 2024 10-K. Regal sits second at 324 sites (Cineworld Group restructured Regal out of Chapter 11 in 2023). Cinemark sits third at 259 US sites. The three majors combined run roughly 1,153 of the 5,800 US theaters, which is around 20 percent of the site count and a larger share of the screen count, because the majors run bigger multiplexes than the regional circuits.

The top three chains (AMC, Regal, Cinemark) run roughly 1,153 of 5,800 sites, about 19.9 percent. Extend that to the next tier (Marcus, Alamo Drafthouse, Harkins, Malco, B&B, Emagine, UEC) and you get to roughly 25 percent. The remaining 75 percent is regional circuits, single-location independents, art houses, and drive-ins. Exhibition reads as consolidated in headlines because the majors hold most of the wide-release screens, but the site map is still long-tail.

Yes. The dataset is filterable by state, metro, ZIP, chain affiliation, parent company, and site features (IMAX, premium large format, dine-in, drive-in, art house). California, Texas, Florida, and New York together hold about 30 percent of US sites, so most vendors start with those four plus their named target metros. Tell us the cut you want when you request the sample.

AMC under-counts in our raw chain-resolver because some AMC sites file under operator subsidiary LLCs that do not roll cleanly to the AMC parent. The 570 figure on this page is the publicly disclosed AMC 10-K 2024 site count, applied as an override on top of the raw resolver output. We surface both numbers in the export so your team can see the resolver floor and the corrected total. Regal, Cinemark, Marcus, Harkins, and Malco roll cleanly without overrides.

Sony Pictures Entertainment acquired Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in June 2024. It is the first studio acquisition of a US theater chain since the Paramount Consent Decrees lapsed in 2020. Alamo runs roughly 40 US sites under Sony's ownership and is operated as a subsidiary. For vendors selling into Alamo, the procurement seat sits with Alamo's operations team, not Sony's. We tag Alamo sites as Sony-owned in the parent column and keep the buyer contact at the operating-company level.

Three cases. First, if you only sell to enterprise exhibition buyers at the AMC, Regal, and Cinemark tier, you need three relationships, not 5,800 records. Second, if you sell content (films, trailers, ad inventory) to studios or distributors, you want the distribution-side map, not the exhibitor-side map. Third, if your motion fires only above 250,000 dollars in annual contract value, the long tail of regional circuits and single-screen independents will not fit your unit economics.