Despite recent downward attendance trend, Fairbury's Bonham Theatre board remains bullish about future

In small town Nebraska, there's often only one way to see the latest movies on a big screen, and it's normally not easy to keep the doors of these small operations open.

Many rural theaters are facing similar problems: their attendance numbers are dwindling, while the number of alternative viewing options like streaming is going up.

Those were some of the challenges the board of the Bonham Theatre Project in Fairbury addressed in their annual meeting in mid February. Chief among them: a large drop in both ticket sales and concession sales compared to last year.

"Last year was not a great year for us, as you’ll see in the number we talk about," Bonham Theatre Project board president Brooke Schwab said. "The biggest item that jumps out is the concessions and ticket sales, that’s what drives everything, right? And you look at more than $20,000 less in concessions and ticket sales from the year before, that hurts. That’s a lot to make up."

Of course, the marquee draw for any theater is the slate of movies they show. They showed a total of 37 paid or free admission movies in 2024, fewer than in years past. Manager Brian Aden says it's hard to predict which movies will draw the most reliable crowds.

"We have a good, diverse selection of movies, but that doesn’t always translate to attendance. What shows nationally, what seems to be at the top, doesn’t always correlate to what’s here," Aden said. "There’s always different things to consider, but some movies just don’t play well here. Horror movies are very popular nationwide – they don’t play well here. It’s hard to always get the best ones."

Aden presented a slideshow detailing which movies sold the best (Lilo and Stitch, Wicked: For Good and Zootopia 2 easily topped the list), how those rankings compared to the national picture, how much of each type of concession was sold (2,433 popcorn tubs and 110 pickles, a famous wrinkle thrown in by the theater's former manager), and how many hours each volunteer worked to help the place run every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

"More and more we’ve been keeping movies for two or three weeks, just because I think there’s fewer movies out there that I think are worth getting. Plus with the costs of some of these, it’s just not worth our time to get a movie that I know that we’re going to lose money on. We do that enough as it is," Aden said.

The board was formed in 2012 when the theater, which first opened 100 years ago, almost closed for good. The board was able to reopen it in 2017 and enjoyed its most successful year in 2019, but the 2025 numbers reflect what's largely been a downward trend in attendance since then. The Bonham reported 4,920 total tickets sold in 2025, a significant drop from the 7,250 in 2024.

But Fairbury's theater is far from alone in this landscape - the numbers here are more of a reflection of industry-wide uncertainty.

"If you look at the overall numbers, yes, money is actually up, in terms of how much money is actually being brought in, but ticket sales have continued to go down every year post-COVID," Aden outlined. "The only reason revenue has gone up is because ticket prices have gone up. But there’s going to come a point where that’s not going to work anymore – you can’t just keep raising ticket prices to make up for the losses of ticket sales."

Still, thanks to partnerships, sponsorships, and other types of external relations, the Bonham board remained bullish that big things are still possible for this small town's sole theatre.

"Luckily we did still end up in the black and not in the red, but...it’s not the prettiest picture we’ve had. Hopefully this will turn around this year – and this January is off to a better start than last January, so that’s a good piece," Schwab said.

The Bonham first began showing movies in 1926. Now, 100 years later, they will be part of the inaugural Jefferson County Gives fundraiser later in March as they continue to search for ways to keep the doors of this historic operation open.