A longtime Kips Bay movie destination is preparing for its final credits.
AMC Kips Bay 15, a familiar stop for Manhattan moviegoers for nearly 30 years, is set to close after decades in the neighborhood. The theater first opened in 1999 with five screens on Second Avenue before relocating in 2006 to its current home at 570 Second Ave.
An AMC employee confirmed to The Post that an exact closing date has not yet been announced, though the cinema is expected to remain open through the end of the year. Even the theater’s manager, the employee said, has not been given a final day of operation.
ABC News reported that the building’s owner is moving to end the lease ahead of its planned expiration, with “details still being finalized.”
“The theatre has been an important part of the Kips Bay community and surrounding neighborhoods, providing guests with a place to enjoy the magic of the movies together,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
AMC customers will still have several nearby options for big-screen releases, including AMC Empire 25 IMAX in Times Square, AMC Lincoln Square and AMC 34th Street 14.
What will replace the Kips Bay theater remains unclear, as no official plans have been made public. In the meantime, a site called Save Kips Bay is encouraging film fans to sign a petition aimed at preserving the cinema, noting that it is the only IMAX theater in the area.
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The campaign also claims NYU Langone is poised to take over the property, arguing that the neighborhood does not need another “institutional medical space.”
“NYU Langone already dominates huge portions of Kips Bay. Now our neighborhood’s only movie theater, a 15-screen AMC and the only IMAX on Manhattan’s East Side, is reportedly threatened by yet another NYU medical expansion,” the website reads.
The owner of the theater is Kips Bay Development Limited Partnership, care of M.D. Carlisle Construction Corp. Neither NYU Langone nor the property owner has publicly stated whether NYU is taking over the space.
The post reached out to NYC Langone for comment but has not heard back.
“Kips Bay did not lose its theater to streaming, or to a bad quarter, or to a landlord who couldn’t fill the space. It lost it because someone decided this block is worth more as something other than a neighborhood,” the site read.
AMC currently has 860 theaters across the globe and is the largest theater chain in the world. But in a February earnings call, CFO Sean Goodman revealed that AMC will be closing “underperforming locations.”
Goodman also said that since 2020, AMC had shut down 213 locations, while opening 65 new theaters in the same timeframe. Since 2025, the company has closed six theaters.
