Within 24 hours of SIFF announcing at the opening night of their annual film festival the happy news that they’d bought the Seattle Cinerama and would reopen it later this year, a line for the theater’s signature chocolate popcorn was already snaking into Bellevue.
“I know its re-opening is probably still a few months away, but you know how the chocolate popcorn line gets,” said local cinephile and foodie Jake Robinson as he waited patiently in line at Bellevue Downtown Park this afternoon. “I just want to make sure I’m in line early enough for its first movie showing in years—yes, so much so that I’ll even cross the bridge for it and then back again whenever this line starts moving again in a few months. Don’t worry about me: This isn’t even the longest I’ve had to wait in this line. When The Hunger Games opened there, it was backed up all the way to Sammamish for weeks.”
Though more than pleased to see the entire city of Seattle so excited for the theater to re-open, SIFF Artistic Director Beth Barrett wanted to remind those already in line for chocolate popcorn could definitely come back from the Eastside now and line up later this year.
“Hey guys, we’re excited about the chocolate popcorn too, but we’ve also got a full slate of incredible independent films and documentaries you can start seeing in air-conditioned movie theaters starting this weekend, so you can all head on back here now,” Barrett said a in a statement. “We wish it was possible to duplicate and sell chocolate popcorn at any of our other theaters, but you can mix Raisinettes into their popcorn and we swear it gets you just as close to Type II diabetes if not closer.”
At press time, the only thing convincing people not to wait so early in line for the trademark Cinerama treat was Molly Moon’s heroically stepping in to offer popcorn-topped chocolate ice cream sundaes.
