some of the ones still open now double as flea markets or event spaces during the day to make the land pay for itself.
shrank a lot from their 50s/60s peak, land got too expensive, digital projector upgrades cost a fortune, and streaming/home theaters ate into demand. still a few hundred left in the US though, and they had a little pandemic-era comeback when nothing else was open.
the digital projector upgrade requirement around 2013 (when studios stopped distributing film reels) is what actually killed off a huge chunk of the remaining ones.