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Cinema owners who don't have a digital projector in their movie house can't show Paramount Pictures' latest release: The Wolf of Wall Street. This year Paramount became the first big studio to distribute a major release in the U.S. entirely in a digital format, and other studios are likely to follow.

Most big theaters around the country are ready for the change, but it may threaten many of the nation's smaller cinemas which are struggling to raise money for the transition.

'We Either Had To Convert Or Close The Doors'

Dozens of small cinemas have taken to Kickstarter. The Tampa Pitcher Show has been trying to raise $30,000. It's got a video up that includes a group of regulars who dress up and perform at screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. They're dancing until the lights go dark. "We've got to start showing our movies digitally otherwise we're not going to be able to show them at all," one of the performers says.

So far, the Kickstarter campaign for the Tampa Pitcher Show isn't going well.

Still, fans of neighborhood cinemas like it are pitching in because they say small local movie houses offer more to the community than a multiplex — they are social centers where people can act out The Rocky Horror Picture Show and see locally made films and live events.

But, first-run movies pay the bills and Tampa Pitcher Show owner Wayne Valenti says he was taken by surprise when he got a letter in early December from Paramount announcing it would cease distributing most movies on film by Dec. 31.

"They just really gave a short straw notice on the thing," he says, "and we either had to convert or close the doors basically."

It's not as if Valenti didn't know this day would come — the movie studios have been giving warnings for years that the end of film is nigh, according to Isabel Fondevila, director of the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. "[Distributors] keep sending us letters," she says, "like, 'Heads up. We're not going to have anything else but DCP so get ready.'"

DCP stands for Digital Cinema Package, which is what the studios are calling the new digital equipment and distribution system. The Roxie is the oldest continuously running theater in the country, according to Fondevila.

An Inevitable Switch To Digital

To see its legendary projection booth, I climb a narrow flight of wood stairs. The Roxie has two big, hulky 35-millimeter projectors screwed to the floor. Jim Lung, who's been a projectionist at the Roxie for over 30 years, threads the film, lights the lamps and finally flips the switch. Then, I hear that familiar slapping-like sound of film making its way through the projector — a sound that will soon vanish. Lung is not looking forward to the change because he doesn't like the look of digital.

"When you can actually sit there and you can see pores on people's skin, it's like, 'What happened here?' " Lung says. "You can actually see some makeup on them .... In the old days you would never see that."

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