PEORIA, Ill. - March 1, 2021 - Emerging incongruously enough from Midwestern cornfield country, a new grassroots, Heartland-based company has been formed in order to address and serve the needs of the female popular-movie audience. Storefront Cinema Systems founder Rich Thornton contends that female fans are roundly neglected, ignored and mar-ginalized at the multiplex and is calling for a re-ordering of the movie business.   

Now It’s The Girls’ Turn 

In establishing the enterprise and launching its ambitious maiden property, Thornton is pursuing a uniquely large-scale and ground-breaking agenda. The company is mounting the first full-fledged multi-chapter/episode serial motion picture produced in the U.S. since 1956’s Blazing the Overland Trail (Columbia). Those Saturday afternoon matinee serials of yore—a/k/a “cliffhangers” or “chapterplays”—always fell under the rubric of “adventure” and were invariably intended for boys. What Storefront Cinema is doing with the serial format, Thornton submitted, is turning the tables 180. “This time around it’s for the girls,” he stated.   

Retrofuturism: The New Serial 

In reviving and updating the serial-movie structure for the modern-day multiplex, some key changes are being made. For instance, instead of 20 minutes or so for each installment, the running time for the new serial’s individual chapters will be an hour. As of now, then, six 1-hour chapters are planned for the romancer. Even the overall moniker for the series (each chapter has its own separate title),The Rays from Space and the Secret Kissing Experiments: The Adventures of the New Electric Girls—the time is 1959, the place is Florida—is an affectionate homage to the knockabout serials of yesteryear. 

Re-Inventing Movie Romance 

The all-out, wall-to-wall mode of romancing promised by the new romance serial is “unlike anything seen before on the big screen,” Thornton enthused. Not since the dizzying era of the Valentino craze and the spellbinding early Garbo will “romance,” with all of its flood of emotion and female-shed bucketfuls of tears, be writ so large across the movie screens of America.

Main Street’s New Voice  

Only the acutely-attuned-to-Main Street denizens of flyover country, as opposed to the woefully out of touch media/entertainment elites ensconced in their ivory towers on the  coasts, could devise such a revolt and uprising in the entertainment sector: without shame, without guilt, the unflinching creation of an unabashed, intense new brand of romantic drama for America’s movie houses. Portending brisk, unprecedented repeat business, the new romance strategies for taking moviedom by storm will prove to be “utterly intoxicating and thoroughly addictive,” Thornton explained. 

About Storefront Cinema Systems 

Storefront Cinema is a leader in offering new customer value at the movie box-office.  

With all six of the serial’s chapters camera-ready, it is currently seeking creative and business partners for its debut initiative.