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The price for two tickets, two popcorns and two sodas at Sedgefield Crossing's Cinemas: $9, or roughly the same as a single adult nonmatinee ticket at some of Greensboro's other movie theaters.

As personal entertainment budgets have shrunk, the audiences have grown at the seven-screen multiplex, which charges $2.50 admission for all ages.

"The downturn in the economy has helped," says owner Daniel Kleeberg. "There are more new people. We have a lot of regulars. And for a lot of families, this is their weekly outing."

The movies on the marquee are typically a few months old. In some cases, the films have already been released on DVD, but still manage to draw a good crowd. A peek inside a recent screening of "Slumdog Millionaire" two weeks after it came out on DVD revealed a nearly packed house.

"You can probably rent it for a dollar," says Greensboro teacher Felicia McGhee, who was heading in to see the Oscar-winning film. "But it doesn't have the same effect as the big screen. And for $2.50 -- the price is still pretty good."

The theater, on the corner of Groometown and High Point roads, is one of five discount movie houses owned by Kleeberg in North Carolina and Virginia, and the only discount cinema in Greensboro. Kernersville Countryside Cinemas, which charges $3, and Carmike 8 in High Point, which charges a dollar, also draw many budget-seekers.

The 45-year-old Kleeberg, who lives in High Point, has been in the theater business for about three decades, having started out working the snack bar and mopping the floors at a local cinema when he was a teenager. He bought his first theater in 1992, and today has a total of 24 screens at theaters in Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Salisbury, North Wilkesboro and Winchester, Va.

In 2002, he set up shop at Sedgefield Crossing. The 27,000-square-foot building opened as a Litchfield Theater in 1990 and had been a Regal Cinemas before Kleeberg moved in.

Food and drink prices are printed on plain sheets of paper, hung with tape above the snack bar rather than on lighted boards common to first-run theaters. Employees dispense tickets by hand from an actual roll, instead of a machine. The individual theaters have sloped, linoleum tile floors and the walls are hung with beige and brown curtains.

In total, the cinema's seven screens seat about 1,300, with the biggest room seating 335. Attendance on a typical Saturday night, Kleeberg said, averages between 500 to 600, but that depends on the weather and the movies themselves. Family films such as "Paul Blart: Mall Cop," "Bedtime Stories" and "Bolt" seem to do especially well, he said. But attendance can dip on nice weekends in early spring when people are catching up on yard work.

Recently, the movie house began offering a "Recession Concession" special -- $1 popcorn and $1 drink, 12 ounces in a white Styrofoam cup. The theater is a cash-only operation, which means the business doesn't have to pay credit-card transaction fees.

Kleeberg keeps costs down by having a small staff, which includes his 16-year-old son Zack, and doing many tasks himself, from cleaning the bathrooms to splicing the film reels.

He also saves money by starting all the movies at roughly the same time -- usually 7 p.m., with additional 9:20 p.m. shows on Friday and Saturday and 1:30 and 4 p.m. shows Saturday and Sunday -- instead of having tiered showtimes like most theaters. Monday through Thursday, when the theater has just one showing per night, employees only have to be there a few hours. The synchronous start times also help cut down on energy costs.

And because the movies are usually a few months old when he gets them, Kleeberg pays lower rental fees for the prints -- typically in the range of 35 to 50 percent of ticket sales compared to upward of 90 percent for films in their first week of release.

When Kleeberg gets a film depends on how popular it is. If a movie doesn't do very well at the box office, he might get it only a few weeks after its release. However, for a movie like "The Dark Knight," last year's highest grossing film, he might have to wait three or four months. The distributor makes the decision about when the movie can play in second-run theaters.

Some discount cinema owners, Kleeberg said, grumble about getting bigger movies right before, or even after, the DVD release. But Kleeberg actually sees that as a plus, because the publicity for the DVD often revives interest in the movie. Likewise, a film winning or being nominated for awards (like "Slumdog Millionaire" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") also can boost box office.

"When it's all over TV that 'Slumdog Millionaire' won the Academy Award for Best Picture and it's on DVD -- that's almost as good as when the movie first comes out and they saturate the market with big ad buys. It's great for business," he says.

People start trickling into the theater about 6:30 p.m. on a typical Friday. A player-piano, flanked by statues of Marilyn Monroe and the Blues Brothers, provides music in the lobby before the show.

"Give me two for, um -- what do you want to see?" says Richard Taylor of Archdale, turning to his wife Amanda.

"It doesn't matter. How about 'Hotel for Dogs,' " she replies.

"We come about twice a week," Amanda Taylor says. "It's very affordable. And there's always something we want to see. It just makes sense."

A few minutes after the Taylors buy their tickets, Martha Soltani comes in with a group of 15 middle school-aged girls carrying pillows and stuffed animals. They're heading in to see "The Pink Panther 2."

"We're having a pajama party," says Soltani, who was chaperoning the group made up of her daughter and friends from High Point Gymnastics Academy. "They have specials that make it affordable for me to bring this group of girls. I couldn't do this in a (first-run) theater with this many kids."

The theater business is a tough one to make a lot of money in, Kleeberg says, but his love of movies has kept him going.

"It's just something that's always brought enormous happiness and excitement," he says. "I can remember going to the drive-in to see 'Smokey and the Bandit' with my mother. We went four nights in a row, and every time she announced that we were going, I was as excited as could be."

Still, even though he's a movie buff, he said he's so busy that he doesn't get to watch many films in his theaters, and when he tries, he's usually interrupted by an employee who needs something.

So occasionally, he'll go to another theater and pay full price.

Contact Robert C. Lopez at 691-5091 or robert.lopez@news-record.com