EVO Entertainment Is Coming to Forney: IMAX, 22 Bowling Lanes, and More

Forney is getting a movie theater. It’s also getting 22 bowling lanes, a ropes course, bumper cars, laser tag, rock climbing walls, an arcade, and a full-service restaurant and bar — all in the same building.

EVO Entertainment broke ground on an 82,000-square-foot venue at The Village at Gateway on January 20, 2026, with an opening planned for fall 2026. The address is 1065 Cypress Hollow Drive, inside the 120-acre Gateway development on US-80.

The Numbers

82,000 square feet of entertainment under one roof
$40 million estimated construction cost
9 theaters, including one IMAX auditorium and two premium EVX auditoriums
22 bowling lanes
~235 jobs projected three years into operation
Fall 2026 target opening

What’s Actually In It

EVO’s model is “cinema-entertainment center” — the theater is the anchor, but it’s not the whole business. The Forney venue is planned to include:

Nine auditoriums (IMAX + two EVX premium large-format screens)
22 bowling lanes
Full-service bar and restaurant
An upper-level lounge
Arcade and redemption games
Rock climbing walls
A ropes course
Bumper cars
Laser tag
Private event space

For a city that has had zero movie screens, going from nothing to nine — one of them IMAX — is a significant jump. Forney families have been driving to Mesquite, Rockwall, or Terrell for a movie for as long as Forney has been growing.

Why This One Matters More Than a Retail Opening

A Target or a Ross changes where you shop. An entertainment venue changes where you spend a Friday night, and that’s a different category of local impact.

Three practical effects:

Teen problem, partially solved. The most common complaint from Forney parents with middle- and high-schoolers is that there’s nowhere for kids to go. This is that place.
Weekend dollars stay local. Dinner, a movie, and bowling for a family of four is a meaningful amount of money that currently leaves Kaufman County every weekend.
Jobs for people who need first jobs. Entertainment venues hire heavily part-time and heavily young. Two hundred-plus roles in a town where teens have limited options is real.

Track the rest of the openings in our Village at Gateway opening calendar.

Traffic, Realistically

US-80 through Forney is already carrying Target, H-E-B, Home Depot, and a Costco fuel station, and it’s under active expansion construction. Adding a nine-screen theater with a Friday-night rush is going to be felt.

If you’re planning around it once it opens:

Weeknight showings will be dramatically easier than Friday and Saturday.
Matinees on weekends beat evening shows for parking, not just ticket price.
Bowling leagues typically claim weeknight evening lanes — check before you show up expecting an open lane at 7 PM on a Tuesday.

The Fitness Angle, Honestly

We’re not going to pretend a movie theater is a health hazard. Sitting through a two-hour film is not what’s holding anyone back.

But here’s a pattern worth naming, because we’ve watched it play out in Forney for 25 years: entertainment expands to fill available time, and training doesn’t. Nobody ever forgets to go to the movies. Plenty of people forget to train.

The fix isn’t discipline. It’s sequencing. If you know Friday night is now a family night at EVO, put your session earlier that day rather than telling yourself you’ll “get to it this weekend.” A workout scheduled before the fun thing happens. A workout scheduled after it doesn’t.

Two other things that help:

Climbing walls and ropes courses are genuinely demanding. If you’re going to do those with your kids, grip strength and general conditioning make them fun instead of embarrassing. That’s a legitimate reason to train.
Bowling 22 lanes’ worth of games is a lot of repeated one-sided rotation. If your back complains the next day, that’s a signal, not bad luck.

Five Minutes Down the Same Road

TX Fitness has been at 127 E US Highway 80, Forney, TX 75126 for over 25 years — the same corridor EVO is building on. Weekday hours start at 5 AM, so you can train before the day starts and still have Friday night entirely free.

No annual fee, and members with kids can use the supervised Kids Zone during the morning and late-afternoon windows.

Join TX Fitness →

Questions? Call (972) 564-0909 or stop in for a tour.