The IPIC Theaters at Colony Square in Midtown (1197 Peachtree Street) will soon close, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act filing from Wednesday.
In their notice to employees, the company blamed the closure on "business circumstances." The theater will close April 28, affecting 163 employees.
ToNeTo Atlanta has learned that the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in West Palm Beach, Florida on February 25.
The luxury dinner & a movie operator filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy the first time in August 2019 and was ultimately acquired after a successful bankruptcy restructuring in November 2019.
IPIC opened Serena Pastificio, an upscale, full-service Italian restaurant at Colony Square on July 13, 2021 in a space adjacent to its theater. The 230-seat, roughly 6,600 square foot eatery was the first separate restaurant concept for the theater operator, but a second location debuted in December 2022 alongside an existing IPIC at Mizner Park in Boca Raton.
A source at the restaurant indicates that IPIC is looking to sell the Serena concept to outside investors and that if successful, it would remain a going concern as an independent brand. If unsuccessful, Serena would, like the theater, close as of April 28.
As of February 2026, the company operates fourteen theatre locations (and two Serena units) across nine states, with Florida home to three.
IPIC's upcoming closure comes on the heels of the closure of CMX CinéBistro and its ten screen theater at Halcyon (5180 Town Center Boulevard) in Alpharetta. The theater spanned nearly 38,000 square feet and helped anchor the mixed-use development. The theater reportedly closed abruptly this past Sunday, having first opened on September 27, 2019.
It was the third in metro Atlanta for the "dinner & a movie" theater operator, joining locations in TOWN Brookhaven and Peachtree Corners Town Center. The Brookhaven and Peachtree Corners theatres closed in September 2020 and December 2025, respectively, with their parent company, Cinemex Holdings USA, also going through two bankruptcy filings in recent years.
Are you surprised to see IPIC close in Colony Square? Where do you typically see movies? What would you like to see open in place of IPIC at Colony Square?
Please share your thoughts below.
4 comments:
I loved this place. It was great for Midtown. I hope it is replaced by a similar concept. BTW -- the staff was really, really good.
Well well well. So we all told the movie theater folks that it was becoming too expensive for us regular people. And their response to that message was, "let's create an 'experience' that's even MORE expensive!" And, shockingly, the end result was .... bankruptcy. I'm not sure they'll ever learn.
Very sorry to see this happen. IPIC is a major anchor for Colony Square and a draw for pre-post theater dining to the complex. Although the dining movie theater concept is under siege right now, I'm hoping that one of the remaining theater brands takes over the space. (Would it be worth it to start a campaign?) We go to both venues at least once a month. Although IPIC says they are trying to sell the Serena restaurants separately, the location in Colony Square appeared to rely in part on providing meals for the theater, and the restaurant business in ATL has seen a lot of closings, so.... Sorry for the employees but at least they sent a WARN notice.
When the whole place starts to smell like POT smoke by the time the matinee plays, (some of that rolling off the employees themselves) people notice and stop coming. The first couple years open, IPIC was my preferred theater, but the last two years that all changed. Staff that didn't care whether you were there or not, poor service, late drinks, and often dirty seats & sticky floors, sold to you at an upscale price. And the clientele changed - it turned into a place that I would rather avoid . It's a shame such a major component of the Colony Square revamp has failed, but not entirely surprising either. Theaters in general need to focus on the guest experience, and do it very well (consistently) for these places to survive.
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