Most movie theaters are commercial operations catering to the general public, who attend by purchasing a ticket. The movie is projected with a movie projector onto a large projection screen at the front of the auditorium. Some movie theaters are now equipped for digital cinema projection, removing the need to create and transport a physical film print.

Outside of North America, most English-speaking countries use the term cinema (pronounced /ˈsɪnɨmə/, but formerly spelt "kinema" and pronounced /ˈkɪnɨmə/). Both terms, as well as their derivative adjectives "cinematic" and "kinematic," ultimately derive from the Greek κινῆμα, -ατος, "movement." In these areas the term "theatre" is usually restricted to live-performance venues.

In the United States, the customary spelling is "theater", but the National Association of Theatre Owners uses the spelling "theatre" to refer to a movie theater.

Colloquial expressions, mostly used for cinemas collectively, include the silver screen, the big screen (contrasted with the "small screen" of television) and (in the United Kingdom) the pictures, the flicks, and the flea pit (or fleapit).

A "screening room" usually refers to a small facility for viewing movies, often for the use of those involved in the production of motion pictures, or in large private residences.

The first public exhibition of projected motion pictures in the United States was at Koster and Bial's Music Hall on 34th Street in New York City on April 23, 1896. However, the first "storefront theater" in the US dedicated exclusively to showing motion pictures was Vitascope Hall, established on Canal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana June 26, 1896—it was converted from a vacant store.

A crucial factor was Thomas Edison's decision to sell a small number of Vitascope Projectors as a business venture in April–May 1896. In the basement of the new Ellicott Square Building, Main Street, Buffalo, New York, Mitchell Mark and his brother Moe Mark added what they called Edison’s Vitascope Theater (entered through Edisonia Hall), which they opened to the general public on October 19, 1896 in collaboration with Rudolf Wagner, who had moved to Buffalo after spending several years working at the Edison laboratories. This 72-seat plush theater was designed from scratch solely to show motion pictures.

Terry Ramseye, in his book, A Million and One Nights (1926) [p. 276], notes that this “was one of the earliest permanently located and exclusively motion-picture exhibitions.” According to the Buffalo News (Wednesday, November 2, 1932), "There were seats for about 90 persons and the admission was three cents. Feeble, flickering films of travel scenes were the usual fare." (The true number of seats was 72.)

The first permanent structure designed for screening of movies in the state of California was Tally's Electric Theater, completed in 1902 in Los Angeles. Tally's theater was a storefront within a larger building, but apparently purpose-built as a movie theater. The Great Train Robbery (1903), which was 12 minutes in length, would also give the film industry a boost.

In 1905, Pittsburgh movie theater owners Harry Davis and John Harris also established the first of what would become a popular form of movie theaters spread throughout the country, which were five-cent nickelodeon movies. In 1906, Montreal opened one of the first movie theatres in the world. An even older movie theatre -which is still in action today, according to the Guinness World Records- belonged to the Pionier Cinema, and opened as the Helios on September 26, 1909, in Szczecin, Poland (at the time of the opening it was Stettin, Germany). Nevertheless, this position was beaten in 2008 when the owners of the Korsør Biograf Teater in Korsør, Denmark, discovered that they actually operated a movie theater that opened in August 1908. They were accepted into the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest still operating movie theater the same year (to appear in the 2010 edition of the book).