Senior Film and Media Reporter

Movie theater operator Rick Roman, who runs Crowne Point Theatre in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, sees multiplexes as buffets. "You can't just have a main course," he says. "You need salads and desserts."

With his culinary metaphor, Roman suggests that movie theaters need a little bit of everything on their awnings to thrive. As it happens, he and his fellow exhibitors are enjoying a late-summer revival, as audiences feast on the range of genres, from superhero adventures ("Deadpool & Wolverine") and animation ("Despicable Me 4," "Inside Out 2") to disaster episodes ("Twisters"), horror ("Longlegs") and book adaptations ("It Ends With Us").

Of course, there were failures along the way, including Kevin Costner’s Western “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1” (with “Chapter 2” later pushed back from its Aug. 16 release date), Sony and Apple’s big-budget romantic comedy “Fly Me to the Moon” and Lionsgate’s video game adaptation “Borderlands.” But the mood in theaters these days is more cheerful than it was in May, when potential blockbusters like “The Fall Guy,” “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” and “IF” failed to ignite popcorn season at the box office.