Every Outdoor Movie Series Still Running in L.A., Ranked by What Two People Pay

Thirty-eight free county screenings are left this season and eleven of them land on the same Thursday. The famous one in the cemetery charges more for a parking pass than for a ticket. Five series, priced from posted rates.

Free is not the underdog in this category. It is the incumbent. Los Angeles County Parks is running a free outdoor movie series across 27 parks that the department's own summer guide counts at 108 movie nights; we read all four of the county's schedule sheets and counted every screening still to come after tonight, and got 38. Eleven of them fall on one Thursday — August 20 — in eleven different parks. Two days later, on the other side of the same city, a lawn ticket to Cinespia at Hollywood Forever is $31.02 all in, and the pass to leave your car on the property is $35.88. That is the spread this month: nothing, or ninety-eight dollars for two people who drive.

The criteria, stated once. First, the series has to have a dated screening posted on its own page as of today; nobody makes this list on reputation. Second, the number that decides the order is what two adults actually pay at the advance price, arriving together in one car, from rates the organizer posts. Third, what the money buys — the seat, the sound, the start time, and how much of your evening the gate asks for before the picture begins. We priced every entry from published sources and counted the dates ourselves. Nobody from this desk sat on any grass.

1. Movies in the Park, L.A. County Parks — $0, and 38 chances left

Twenty-seven parks, four nights each, and the arithmetic checks: 27 times four is the 108 the county advertises. The series runs July 9 through August 29, which means it closes a week before Labor Day weekend and takes the cheapest movie in Los Angeles with it. Start times are not uniform, and this is where a reader gets burned: the schedule sheets list Bethune Park at 1244 East 61st Street at 6 p.m., Jesse Owens Park on South Western at 7 p.m., Pamela Park in Duarte at 7:45, Franklin D. Roosevelt Park and East Rancho Dominguez Park at 8, and most of the rest at the elastic hour the county prints as "Sundown."

August 20 is the night the series stops being a park program and starts being a system. Eleven parks screen on the same evening — Belvedere, Bethune, El Cariso in Sylmar, George Washington Carver, Hellen Keller, Jesse Owens, Rimgrove in La Puente, Ruben F. Salazar, Saybrook, Valleydale in Azusa and William Steinmetz in Hacienda Heights — and the county lets each one pick its own picture. Valleydale is showing Star Wars: The Force Awakens; Steinmetz is showing Grease, the 1978 one; Jesse Owens and Bethune both drew Wicked: For Good. The honest caveat is that this is a family slate built mostly from recent studio releases: the oldest picture we found still to come is Grease, the 1978 one, at Steinmetz on the 20th. If you want a repertory program for grown-ups, that argument is settled at No. 5.

2. Street Food Cinema at the Autry — $46 for two, and the parking is free

The best-value paid ticket in the category, and it is not close on the all-in number. Street Food Cinema's own event pages post advance general admission at $23, a reserved section at $29, children's admission at $10, and kids five and under free; the next two Autry nights are Obsession on August 22 and Michael on August 29, doors at 6 p.m., band at 7, picture at 8:30. Parking, per the same page, is free at and near the Autry and throughout Griffith Park, with a VIP pass sold only to guarantee a space out front. Two adults, one car, one Saturday: $46, with food trucks — Border Grill, Pickles & Peas and Andy's Famous Shawarma and BBQ are the listed three on the 22nd — and a leashed dog allowed.

Two asterisks, both from the organizer's own material. The series' venue matters more than its brand: this Saturday's Princess Bride is at Los Angeles State Historic Park, where the same $23 ticket comes with street parking, an online parking add-on at $16, or on-site parking at $20 and a VIP space at $30 — a car that costs nothing in Griffith Park costs up to thirty dollars downtown, for identical seats. And the pricing has a seam in it: every event page lists a door price ($30 general admission at the Autry, $45 for the September 12 drone-show night) while the series' own FAQ says flatly, "No tickets available at door. All tickets must be purchased online." Buy in advance; that is the number that is definitely real.

3. Marina Movie Nights — $0, and nothing until August 22

The county's Department of Beaches and Harbors runs six free Saturdays on the water at Burton Chace Park, and the whole season is compressed into the back end of summer: the posted lineup opens August 22 with The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants, then Sonic the Hedgehog 3 on the 29th, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World on September 5, Moonrise Kingdom on the 12th, Addams Family Values on the 19th and Hocus Pocus on the 26th. Every movie starts at 8 p.m. — a fixed clock, not a sundown, which is worth something when you are packing a cooler for six people. No tickets are required; the county recommends an RSVP through the per-night Eventbrite pages so it can reach you if a date moves.

It ranks below a $46 night because a free movie you cannot attend for twelve days is not free, it is later. The fine print is unusually specific for a park event: festival seating, first come, first served, no reserved section for the public, low-back lawn or beach chairs and blankets only, and no tents or umbrellas once the show starts. The nearest lots are Marina Parking Lots 77, 4 and 5 — county lots, and the page does not post their rate, which is the one cost here nobody publishes next to the word free.

4. Rooftop Cinema Club DTLA — $43.50 for two, seven nights a week

The pick we expect to argue about. The cheapest single seat on this page that isn't in a public park is on the fourth floor of a hotel at 888 South Olive Street: the venue's own page prices an Adirondack chair at $21.75 and a two-person Loveseat at $28 per person, with wireless headphones included and step-free access by elevator to the terrace. Two chairs, $43.50 — under half a Cinespia night with parking, and available on a Tuesday, which nothing else here is. The August calendar runs nightly and doubles up after dark: August 13 is 10 Things I Hate About You at 8:10 and The Dark Knight at 10:45, August 15 is 50 First Dates then Twilight at 10:50, and August 17 is Pride & Prejudice with open captions. Bring ID and check the badge: most nights on that calendar are marked 16+, and some — August 12's You, Me & Tuscany among them — are 21+.

Ranking a hotel roof above the institution in the cemetery will annoy people, so here is the case, and here is the cost of it. The case: doors open an hour before the picture rather than 105 minutes, the same money buys a chair with a back instead of a patch of lawn, and the club is open the other six nights of the week when every other series in this ranking is dark. The cost: the Loveseat is priced per head, so the romantic option is $56 for two and the unromantic one is $43.50 for the same two people, which is a $12.50 surcharge on sitting next to someone. And the venue's own page says only that self-parking in the Level Hotel garage is paid, with public lots within two blocks. It does not post the rate. Every other entry on this page tells you what the car costs.

5. Cinespia — $97.92 for two, and $35.88 of that is the car

Last, and we are aware of what we are doing. Cinespia's own ticket page calls the 2026 season the 25th anniversary of the first and longest running outdoor screening series in Los Angeles, and counts more than 30 events a year across Hollywood Forever, the Rose Bowl, the Greek and Los Angeles State Historic Park. The August slate at the cemetery is also the one nobody else in this ranking attempts — an R-rated horror double bill on the 15th, Coming to America on the 22nd, a 40th-anniversary Labyrinth on the 29th, and Goodfellas on September 12. Gates at 6:45, film at 8:30, on all three August dates.

Then the ladder, from the August 22 listing on the series' own ticketing platform, which is the night currently posting its full price sheet. General admission, described as lawn-style seating: "$31.02 ($26.00 + $5.02 fees)." On-site parking at Hollywood Forever: "$35.88 ($30.00 + $5.88 fees)." Off-site at Lemon Grove, 900 North Van Ness: $31.02. Off-site at 1149 North Gower: $24.11. The parking pass on the property costs $4.86 more than the ticket it is attached to, and the cheapest lot still runs three-quarters of an admission.

The counter-argument, because it is real and we would rather print it than have it emailed to us. Cinespia is the only entry here that lets you bring beer and wine — the listing says to bring a picnic with both — and it throws in a free photobooth, DJs and a bar; the Autry's pages forbid outside alcohol entirely. It programs for grown-ups on a scale nobody else attempts, in a place people plan a summer around. All of that is true, and none of it changes the arithmetic: $62.04 for two lawn tickets, $97.92 once the car is on the property, or $86.15 if you walk from Gower. It is the most expensive way to watch a movie outdoors in this county by a factor of two, and its own ticket page is the source of the number.

Not ranked, and why

Electric Dusk Drive-In is out on the same rule that got everything else in. Its Eventbrite organizer profile still posts the structure — a $20 early-bird car entrance fee, $25 at the door, plus $8 per person — but as of tonight neither its own showtimes page nor that profile lists a dated screening in Glendale for August 2026. A price without a date isn't a plan. Cinespia's other three venues are excluded for the same reason: the calendar it publishes lists only Hollywood Forever through September 12. And Street Food Cinema's two nights at the Ford, October 30 and 31, carry times but no posted prices yet, so they are noted rather than priced.

One piece of arithmetic to leave with. Thirty-eight free county screenings stand between tonight and August 29, and then that series is finished for the year. The Marina's six free Saturdays do not begin until the 22nd. Which means the free outdoor movie calendar in this county overlaps on exactly two nights — Saturday the 22nd and Saturday the 29th — and after that every screen left in the open air has a price on it.