“The Lost World: Jurassic Park” was the first movie shown at the Athens Cinemagic Theatre back in 1997, and on July 31, Cinemagic will close its doors forever. Perhaps it is a full circle moment, as the last movie to play at Cinemagic will be “Jurassic World: Dominion.”

Cinemagic owner Ralph Freehauf made the difficult decision to sell the theater in October of 2021. Cultivate Free Will Baptist Church has purchased the property with plans to move into the theater after some renovations are made.

“We had looked for another movie theater to sell it to, but we didn’t have any takers. The church is really excited about occupying the building,” Freehauf said.

The theater struggled to gain its footing after the pandemic forced Freehauf to close the doors for several months.

“The pandemic helped to drive away customers; plus we were closed for two or three months, and that didn’t help anything, especially when you have a mortgage payment to pay every month. The main reason was we weren’t earning enough to make the mortgage payment,” he said.

Several people expressed interest in the theater property, but the offers were not enough to cover the existing mortgage.

“I hate that it has come to this. Before we opened up the theater, there was no theater in town, and now we are leaving it the same way we found it – without a movie theater. I love movies. I enjoy going to movies to this very minute. I will continue to go see movies after we get rid of ours. It’s hard to beat a dead horse, and we wouldn’t have been able to be open this long had it not been for the grants we got from Congress,” Freehauf said.

Freehauf is hopeful that a theater company will come to Athens in the future and is passionate about the importance of seeing movies in a theater rather than at home.

“You can’t watch a movie properly on a cell phone or tablet or laptop, or even a TV screen. It’s just not the same,” he said. “When you see a movie on a movie screen, it’s the proper way to see life and be a participant. When you are sitting at home, you don’t know if anybody else is laughing at a particular scene, but in a movie theater, you definitely know someone else is laughing and enjoying the same scene you are.”

Pastor Joel Franks of Cultivate Church is excited to grow the church at the new location while providing opportunities for the community to still catch a movie there. Cultivate Church launched in 2019 and is currently located in Athens Plaza.

“We are a multi-cultural congregation. We have English and Spanish services, so we were looking to purchase our own property rather than rent. We were looking to purchase something that would be large enough to host both services at the same time so we could be one church all together,” Franks explained.

The church will spend several months renovating and making changes needed for them to occupy the building. “We are going to need to level out the floors in a couple of the theaters and add some classrooms, a nursery area, kids church area, teen area, and an area for fellowship.,” Franks said.

Two theaters will be left as they currently are, and the drive in screen will remain. “One of the theaters, we are going to continue to have the equipment, and in the future, we hope to host family-friendly movie night type events or kids movies in the summer when they are out of school,” Franks said. “We want to do that in the future for our community just as a show of good faith, to show our love for Athens, and get to know people a little bit better.”

Cultivate Church does not have a firm date for when they hope to be officially in the building. “Our hope is to be in there by the end of January 2023, but it’s probably more realistic to be in the spring,” Franks said.

As for Freehauf, once the transition is complete, he and his wife hope to travel. He has visited 47 of the 50 states and hopes to soon visit the last three – Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. Movies will continue to play an important role in the Freehauf’s life. He said, “I love movies, and I will continue loving movies.”