Theaters are showing more movies with captions on the screen. Will the trend grow?

Nashville movies have become more accessible in recent months. Regal and the Belcourt Theatre have recently started to offer films with captions on the screen — called “open captioning” — of all their films.

The Belcourt started offering open caption screenings every Wednesday. Regal Theaters, the country’s second largest movie theater chain, headquartered in Knoxville, has long been on the leading edge for the hearing impaired. Former CEO Randy Smith Jr.’s son is deaf and, in his time, Smith pioneered the closed captioning glasses that many theaters offer today. Regal Hollywood in Nashville has started offering open caption screenings. AMC, America’s largest movie chain, has been offering open caption screenings since 2021.

These open captioned screenings are designed for people who have hearing impairment, according to Sarah Silverman, Executive Director of the Belcourt Theatre: “One in seven Americans have hearing loss and other challenges, and that’s the community that we’re really trying to make sure has easy, open, accessible screenings available to them.”

These screenings have also found an unintended audience: People who watch videos with captions on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and everywhere but the theater and have grown to love them. Some of them are happy to attend open caption screenings. 

“At first it was sort of our older patrons coming, but now we’ve seen some younger people who are used to the captions at home,” Jessica Breanne, Belcourt Theatre Operations Director, said.

And open caption movie screenings seem to be here to stay. Silverman says that more studios are making them available, and she predicts that even more will in the future with AI transcription and caption services.