A movie theatre in New Rochelle, New York

Football fans watching a football game in a movie theater

A movie theater or movie theatre, is a place where movies are shown on a big screen. People or "patrons" (the audience) watch movies, usually in chairs inside an auditorium, where the movie is projected with a movie projector onto a large projection screen at the front of the auditorium while the dialogue, sounds and music are played through a number of wall-mounted speakers. A movie theatre is sometimes called a cinema. A theatre with multiple screens commonly is called a "multi-plex" or "mega-plex" (if more than 10 screens). Movie theatres have comfortable chairs. There are different types of formats of a movie theatre.