Dallas, Fort Worth and North Texas: every independent screen a filmmaker can book.
Updated: Oct 4
North Texas has one room built for filmmakers and a lot of rooms that will let one in. The Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff publishes a service menu with four-wall options, tech screenings, and DCP creation on it. Nobody else in the region does. Fort Worth, meanwhile, has lost the Grand Berry, Downtown Cowtown at the Isis, the Community Arts Center theatres, and, as of September 7, 2026, the Coyote Drive-In. What remains there is a museum program, two rentable historic rooms, and a monthly screening in a preservation hall.
This is the North Texas edition of the statewide directory. Every entry was checked against the venue’s own website on September 4, 2026. Published rates are linked, not repeated. Anything not on the venue’s site is not stated here.
The room that programs independent film.
The Texas Theatre on Jefferson Boulevard has 670 seats downstairs and 165 up, and a Filmmaker Services page that reads like it was written by someone who has been on the other side of the counter. Flexible four-wall options for a single show or a week-long run. Cast and crew screenings booked in two- to three-hour blocks, with the best rates on weekday evenings and late nights. Post-production and color sessions on the 38-foot screen, weekdays nine to five. DCP creation and testing. Playback is 2K and 4K QuickTime and DCP, with 5.1 and 7.1 testing. Rates are not published; email info@texastheatre.com. A rental requires an event memo and a card authorization as a damage deposit, and the house provides two wired mics and general lighting but no board operator for a live panel. The same address is home to the Oak Cliff Film Festival.
The rooms you can rent.
The Latino Cultural Center in Dallas is a city cultural venue with a 300-seat theater and a black box. Rental is by facility request form and is limited to cultural and arts events, which a film screening is. It also runs a shorts-only Latino film festival with submissions through FilmFreeway. Rates are not on the page; the FY26-27 rental policy PDF linked there is where to look.
Bishop Arts Theatre Center is a 170-seat proscenium house in Oak Cliff whose rental page lists films among the uses it is built for. There is no film series of its own on the site, so this is a rental, not a programming pitch. Contact is albert@bishopartstheatre.org.
The Rose Marine Theater on Fort Worth’s Northside is Artes de la Rosa’s 252-seat room, on the National Register, with an LCD projector and a full-size screen included in the rental. It is the only venue in the region that publishes an hourly theater rate. The homepage calendar was stale when checked, so confirm the room is active before you plan around it.
The Ridglea Theater in Fort Worth is a 1947 movie house that now runs as a live venue and rents with what its site calls the area’s largest traditional movie screen, projector included. Capacity is listed at 1,000 plus for the main room. There is no film on the current calendar. The rentals page and events@theridglea.com are the path.
The Palace Theatre in Grapevine is a restored 1940s movie house, 432 seats with a balcony, that already runs a First Friday classic series and a summer movie series. Both the Palace and the 200-seat Lancaster next door are available for private rental, but only by phone, through the city’s event planners at 817-410-3541. No rates are published.
The State Theater in Gainesville is a 1938 art deco house with 300 seats on the floor and 100 in the balcony, and a rental page that publishes everything: an hourly rate with a three-hour minimum, a school movie rate, deposits, and a projector add-on. One line to read twice: the theater says it cannot play Blu-ray discs. Bring a file and confirm the playback chain.
The Palace Theatre in Corsicana is a 550-seat nonprofit vaudeville house that lists movies among its uses and publishes its rental terms, including an hourly rate with a six-hour minimum and a per-ticket fee. No projector is specified on the page and no current film series could be confirmed. Ask what they project with.
The Texas Theater in Waxahachie is a 220-seat restored house whose owners, Jon and Alyssa Garrett, say movies are part of the mix alongside music and comedy. There is no rental page. The path is Info@thetxtheater.com, and it is an unstructured ask.
The screening that happens once a month.
Fort Worth Community Cinema runs the Mutant Bazaar on the first Wednesday of every month at Southside Preservation Hall on Lipscomb Street: a night market, a vintage video pre-show, and a secret screening whose genre changes monthly. The group says it exists to give local creative professionals a platform for exhibition, and it is building toward a single-screen repertory theater of its own. There is no submission page; the contact form and info@fwcinema.com are the door. The hall itself rents by quote through the Southside Preservation Association, a 501(c)(3), if you want the room without the night market.
Drive-in.
The Brazos Drive-In in Granbury has been family-owned since 1952 and its Host an Event page says the words most drive-ins avoid: bring your own for a private screening. The lot holds 250 cars. Quotes are custom and format is not stated; the form and contact@brazosdrivein.com are the path.
The Coyote Drive-In in Fort Worth closed for good on September 7, 2026, after the Tarrant Regional Water District ended its lease for Panther Island construction, per CBS Texas and Fort Worth Magazine. The Lewisville location had already closed. Do not send anyone there.
Pitch, don’t rent.
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth runs the most established art house program in the region, Magnolia at the Modern, plus a family series with the Reel House Foundation. Its event rentals cover the lobby and the café, not the auditorium, and there is no submission page. A film gets on that screen by pitching the film program, not by booking a room. Treat it as a curator conversation.
Denton is festival-shaped. The Campus Theatre is owned by the Greater Denton Arts Council and hosts the Denton Black Film Festival, in person January 27 to 31, 2027 with submissions on FilmFreeway, and the city-presented Thin Line Fest, held in March 2026, which is free to attend. Neither the theater nor Theatre Denton publishes a rental route for film. The festivals are the way onto that screen.
Call before you count on it.
The Plaza Theatre in Garland is city-owned, 350 seats, and has a rental page and an FAQ about renting it, but the city’s sites could not be reached for this list. The Rialto in Denison is reported to screen classics, and its domain now redirects to spam. The Kemp Center for the Arts in Wichita Falls describes its Great Hall as a setting for film and links to a rental page that would not load. The Galaxy Drive-In in Ennis, nine screens, publishes no rental or private-screening path at all. All four are a phone call.
The line.
In Dallas the answer is the Texas Theatre, and it is a good answer. In Fort Worth the honest answer is that the region carrying most of the state’s production calendar has no independent art house to premiere in, and the people trying to fix that are running a night market in a preservation hall on the first Wednesday of the month.
If your film is not finished yet, that is the part we do. For filmmakers explains how.
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