On the first Thursday of October 2026, a crowd will gather on the front lawn of Olive Branch City Hall, spread out blankets, and settle in for a screening of Monsters, Inc. It is the opening night of Movies Under the Stars, a free, family-friendly outdoor film series that the city is reviving for the month of October. The following Thursday, October 8, the marquee changes: the movie is Casper, the 1995 family film about a friendly ghost, and the lawn at 9200 Pigeon Roost Road will fill up again.
The series runs every Thursday night in October, with each screening starting at 7 p.m. Admission is free, and no ticket is required. Domino's – Olive Branch, MS is scheduled to be on site each night, along with what the city describes as other community pop-ups. The full 2026 lineup leans hard into the Halloween season: Monsters, Inc. on October 1, Casper on October 8, Hotel Transylvania on October 15, Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island on October 22, and Goosebumps on October 29, which doubles as a Community Trunk or Treat Night.
The city's own calendar describes the series as something it is excited to "bring back," which suggests Movies Under the Stars has run before, though the current schedule is the clearest public record of the 2026 edition. The event announcement was signed by Ken Adams, Olive Branch's mayor. Adams was first elected mayor in 2021 and announced a run for a second term in 2025; before that, he served seven terms as a DeSoto County Justice Court judge, from 1996 to 2021. He has been outspoken about the city's growth trajectory, telling the Daily Memphian he believes Olive Branch will become the most populated city in DeSoto County by 2028, a distinction currently held by Southaven.
That growth is the backdrop for everything the city does these days. Olive Branch was founded by Stephen Flinn and Milton Blocker and incorporated as a city on May 1, 1874, in DeSoto County, just south of the Tennessee line and the Memphis metro. For most of its history it was a small railroad crossroads town. Then it became one of the fastest-growing cities in the country — at one point recording a growth rate of more than 800 percent over a thirty-year span — and by the 2020 census it had 39,711 residents. It is now among the largest cities in Mississippi, and it keeps climbing.
A city growing that fast has to work at the thing small towns take for granted: a sense of shared place. That is part of what makes a series like Movies Under the Stars interesting. It is not a ticketed attraction or a festival with gates and wristbands. It is a lawn, a screen, and an open invitation. Anyone can walk up. The venue is City Hall itself — the seat of local government, at 9200 Pigeon Roost Road — which the city turns into a neighborhood gathering spot once a week for a month.
The choice of films is deliberate. October in a Memphis-suburb town means Halloween is in the air, and the lineup is built around it: Pixar's monsters, a friendly ghost, a family of vampires checking into a hotel, a talking Great Dane, and a dose of R.L. Stine. Casper, the October 8 selection, fits the run perfectly — a movie about a ghost who is not scary, aimed at kids but with enough melancholy to keep the adults watching. It is the kind of programming that works on a lawn: familiar, gentle, and short enough that nobody has to leave before bedtime.
The food arrangement is a small but telling detail. Domino's – Olive Branch, MS, the local franchise location, is on site each Thursday, which means families do not have to pack a dinner to make a night of it. The city also promises "other community pop-ups" without specifying what they are, leaving room for local vendors, organizations, or whatever else shows up on a given week. That looseness is part of the appeal — the series is structured enough to be reliable and casual enough to feel like a block party.
For a city that has spent the last few decades absorbing thousands of new residents, that matters. Olive Branch's population boom has been driven largely by families moving south out of Memphis for schools, space, and lower costs, and a city that grows that quickly can feel like a collection of subdivisions rather than a community. Events like this one are cheap to put on and hard to replicate online. They put neighbors on the same patch of grass.
The practical details are simple. The screenings are on the front lawn of City Hall at 9200 Pigeon Roost Road, Olive Branch, MS 38654. Each begins at 7 p.m. on its Thursday. Admission is free and general admission — there is no ticketing, no reservation, and no gate. Bring a chair or a blanket. The October 8 showing is Casper; the series continues through the end of the month.
What the city is really selling is an hour or two under the sky with the lights of City Hall behind the screen. In a town that has changed as fast as Olive Branch has, that is a modest thing and, judging by the fact that the city is bringing it back, a popular one.