Don’t miss out! Brooklyn Magazine’s free outdoor movie season has officially begun

By Scott Lynch

The city’s best free outdoor movie series, “Paramount+ Movie Nights in Brooklyn,” got off to a sweet start last night as hundreds of fans chilled on the hill in Fort Greene Park for a screening of the charming  2021 stop-motion tear-jerker, Marcel the Shell With Shoes On.

“This movie is so cute. We saw it when it came out and it’s adorable so we invited all our friends to come tonight,” Bed-Stuy resident Jonathon Lovely told Brooklyn Magazine. “This is my first outdoor movie and it’s a lot more put together than I thought it would be! I didn’t realize it would be this crowded. We brought enough snacks and drinks to last us several days.”

Photo by Scott Lynch

Dinner picnickers secured prime spots last night starting around 6 p.m. Every week, the Paramount+ team will give out red lounge chairs to the first 200 guests, but even folks who rolled up right before the lights (the sun) went down got spots with good sightlines at the massive inflatable screen.

There was much eating, snuggling, general camaraderie, cute dogs, lots of kids, and semi-clandestine alcohol consumption in the hours leading up to the movie. DJ Misshap Selam spun a set of summery bangers. “Marcel the Shell” co-writer and producer Elisabeth Holm said a few words in praise of independent filmmaking before the show. The Canadian wildfire smoke mostly stayed away, and the approximately 475 quintillion gnats that weirdly plagued Brooklyn in the early evening dissipated once the sun went down. (WTF was that about, anyway?)

Photo by Scott Lynch

“I just wanted to hang out with my sister and two of our friends tonight, and do something wholesome and cute,” said Elena Barrio of Bushwick. “And can I say how much I love how free stuff there is? I got a hat. I got a cool beach chair. I got every drink that I could ever dream of. I got a free magazine.”

The summer-long series, co-hosted by Brooklyn Magazine and Paramount+, with support from Rooftop Films, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, the Fort Greene Park Conservancy, and the Prospect Park Alliance, will run through mid-September.

The Beep: Antonio Reynoso (Scott Lynch)

Next Thursday’s show in Fort Greene will be the Kid ’n Play cult classic, “House Party,” followed the Thursday after that with the blockbuster “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” and the Thursday after that with the outlandish action-packed epic “RRR.”

Showtime! (Scott Lynch)

The series then moves to Mondays on the Long Meadow in Prospect Park, before wrapping up with four nights in McCarren Park.

Check out the complete schedule here.