On select Thursday nights throughout the summer, the SoKY Marketplace will extend the chance to have an outdoor movie night to the community.

According to an event calendar on SoKY Marketplace’s website, there are screenings of popular family films like “A League of the Own,” “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World,” “A Dog’s Way Home” and Tim Burton’s “Dumbo” on July 11 and 25 and Aug. 15 and 29.

All screenings are free and will be near the SoKY Marketplace Pavilion, where the films will be shown on a projector screen on the side of the Southern Kentucky Performing Arts Center, according to Sarah Wilson, SoKY Marketplace’s director of operations.

Wilson said the series has never been held before.

“This is a new thing,” she said. “It’s honestly kind of a trial run to see the reaction of the community.”

So far, all signs seem to indicate a great deal of local interest, she said.

In June, two movie screenings were scheduled and, while the first of them, a showing of “Mary Poppins Returns,” had to be canceled because of rain, the June 20 screening of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” drew a crowd Wilson guessed was roughly 200 strong.

This, Wilson said, was far larger than she anticipated.

Additionally, numerous families arrived well in advance of the screening’s start time, which is scheduled for dusk each evening, to give the kids a chance to play nearby, Wilson said.

“You have kids from every walk of life coming out and making new friends,” she said.

While Wilson said she doesn’t know for sure why the June 20 screening was so well-attended, she said she suspects it’s because the event offers something free for families to do.

“I think it’s just a nice activity to do outside and it’s downtown and it’s free,” she said.

Wilson said the screenings are especially desirable because of the difficulty many parents find in keeping their children occupied when school’s not in session.

“It gets expensive in the summertime, trying to keep your kids entertained,” she said.

Wilson said she plans to reschedule the “Mary Poppins Returns” screening for another day and is interested in offering a double-feature screening during the SoKY Marketplace’s harvest festival Friday, Oct. 18.