It almost makes me wonder at the prospect of fully off-book unlicensed movie houses. How gangster to set up shop in an abandoned mall and host one-night screenings of pirated films on high end portable projectors? Maybe this already exists and I just don't know about it.

Students at my high school were doing that (with the science classrooms rather than in an abandoned mall) like ~20 years ago. They were watching fansubbed anime though, not Hollywood movies.