“It’s magic, you don’t get that at home": How has Metro Cinemas Boronia survived the age of streaming?

Since working as a cleaner at a theatre in Geelong as an eight-year-old, Tom Schouten has loved the movies and the fast-paced life of working in a cinema.

Today, you’ll find Schouten, 73, at Metro Cinemas Boronia, which he has owned and operated with family since 2005.

But his history with the silver screen dates well before this. A giant of the Melbourne cinema scene, Schouten joined Village Roadshow in 1973. Nine years later he met the woman who would become his wife, Cynthia, who was working for competitor Hoyts.

“Village got a little concerned that I was getting too close to the enemy,” he said.

Over the decades, Schouten has watched cinemas fend off the sale and rental of movies on VHS, DVD and Blu-ray, the era of illegal file sharing and the exponential growth in streaming services.

He says streaming was a significant blow to independent cinemas.

Covid, too, helped cement people into viewing habits that didn’t require leaving home.

“Covid basically wrecked [the] exhibition [industry] - streaming took over, people were too scared to come out when the restrictions were lifted,” he said. “There were a lot of seniors we never saw back again and they were the core of our business.”

Schouten is proud the cinema has rebuilt its audience to about 60 percent of what it was before Covid.

He told the Eastern Melburnian he had recently signed another five-year lease - with a five-year option - to operate Metro Cinemas Boronia.

“We’ve taken the gamble,” he said. “We have every intention of working through that.”

The business is run by Schouten, Cynthia, daughter Ellie, son Kristian and sister-in-law Lisa.

An independent cinema operator never really gets to knock off, as there is always something that needs doing. The schedule has to be locked in months in advance; stock ordered; rosters planned; maintenance on fixtures and projectors completed; cash flow, the books; promotions.

And then there are the post-mix Coke machines - when a water line bursts, flooding ensues. That has happened four times in the past 10 years.

Schouten puts the cinema’s longevity down to the many industry relationships he had developed over the years, and thinking ahead. For example, he installed 227 solar panels about eight years ago to drive down daytime energy costs.

“I’d describe it as doing eight jigsaw puzzles on one jigsaw board,” he said. “It’s not a business for everybody.”

As streaming giants invest billions of dollars in producing their own movies and other content, the relationship between the film studios and cinemas has altered dramatically. 

Films are often launched at the same time on streaming and in cinemas, or not in cinemas at all. If cinemas cut a deal that allows them to screen a movie before it goes to TV, streaming or digital purchase, the window today is often much shorter than it used to be.

But for Schouten, “film’s made for a cinema, it’s not made for a television at home … There’s nothing better than sitting in a theatre at a comedy, hearing other people laugh. It’s magic, you don’t get that at home.”

When the cinema was shut for close to two years during Covid, the family pulled out all 530 seats across the four cinemas to scrub them down.

“We’re just a normal family, but we’ve got a cinema and that’s pretty special,” Schouten said. “Who do you know that has their own cinema?”