Latinos go to the movies – period. According to the Latino Donor Collaborative, in 2024, Latinos bought one in every four movie tickets. That is a whole lotta movie watchin’. Yet, tens of millions of Latinos don’t go to the movies because of the language barrier. Well, it turns out, there’s an app for that – TheaterEars.
The app is free and works pretty intuitively. All you need is your phone and a set of headphones. After a quick download, the user inputs the movie, theater, and showtime. When the user enters the theater, the app automatically syncs, playing the Spanish dub so non-English speakers can share the same movie experience as their English-language friends.
And of course, a Latina came up with. Here’s how. Larry Kawa founded the business, building off his wife, Virginia’s, experience. She’d moved to the US from Colombia, went to college, and married Larry. Once settled, she moved her mother, Maria Higuita, to the states and soon found out that her mama would have to sit out their much-loved family movie nights, thanks to o the language barrier.
“What we found out is that the situation was not something unique. In fact, many other people experienced the exact same thing, [making] a real need for this to help solve a real problem,” Florida-based TheaterEars CEO Dan Mangru and friend of the Kawas told Latina Media Co.
That was around 2012/2013. A few years and several prototypes later, TheaterEars made a small debut in Florida on Super Bowl Sunday of 2017 with The Space Between Us. Later on Thanksgiving weekend of the same year, they made their national debut – fittingly enough – with Coco.
“It was just such tremendous synergy between the right movie, the right place, the right time. And Coco was amazing for us,” shared Mangru. “It was because with that particular film to watch it in English, there’s a set of takeaways, and there’s one experience, but to watch it in Spanish was actually a completely different experience unto itself. There’s so many things that you pick up on the Spanish language version of it that are not present in the English language version. People really took to it. They really adopted it. And, that really opened the doors for us.”
But, in order to last, the company would need to forge strong relationships with Hollywood studios. “This product wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for having the internal champions that we had in each of the studios, and we were very fortunate because there was at least one person in every studio that took this on as their baby,” said Mangru.
It worked.
Soon, the app would tout big studio releases like Hustlers, with Jennifer Lopez giving a rare plug for the app in partnership for the movie (which she also produced).
That was after her fellow Puerto Rican Lin-Manuel Miranda signed on to be an ambassador for TheaterEars. Miranda told People en Espanol, “I wish this had existed when my grandmother was alive so she could take me to the movies and have as much fun as I do.”
Since then films like Barbie, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Avatar: The Way of Water, Top Gun: Maverick, and Avengers: Endgame have all partnered with TheaterEars.
And TheaterEars isn’t stopping there. Project Hail Mary directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller happily offered up their commentary for fans to listen to while watching the film, bringing back some old-school DVD-extra joy. Movie lovers were out of this world excited about the option, with one Reddit user saying “I honestly feel like it’s an absolute game changer.” And theater owners love this option because it encourages another ticket sale. TheaterEars did a limited release on the directors’ commentary, but Mangru says there is major interest from studios to explore this option moving forward.
In the meantime, TheaterEars is focusing on growth. “We have over 3 million people in the US and Canada using [our] product, and now it’s about expansion,” Mangru said. “As you expand out into the other geographies, looking at Mexico, Latin America, and seeing the various use cases for all languages. It’s not just Spanish, but seeing Portuguese and some of the other languages that are spoken all throughout Latin America.” Dan pauses and then adds, “and then obviously the world! I say this is [an] exciting time. This is like we’ve spent all this time getting ready for – right now.”
Back here at home, us Latinos have some pretty big releases on the horizon. Off Star Wars’ first theatrical release in seven years, The Mandalorian and Grogu, Pedro Pascal is also headlining Avengers: Doomsday. Colman Domingo stars in Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day. The Odyssey features John Leguizamo, Lupita Nyong’o, and Mia Goth.
Point being, our community actually has some high-profile pics hitting movie screens, and there’s no reason why our Spanish-speaking amigos and aunties can’t pop a squat in the seat next to us on opening weekend – thanks to TheaterEars.
