A bronze statue of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, complete with their theater seats, is coming to Prudential Plaza in downtown Chicago, giving the city's famous film-critic duo a perch in the Loop. The pair spent decades arguing over movies on television before becoming shorthand for a good review across the country, and now their likenesses are set to join Chicago's public art landscape.
The news comes via a report from Crain's Chicago Business, which described a bronze Siskel and Ebert statue with their theater seats headed for the plaza. The outlet's reporting frames the project as the latest honor for two critics whose influence on moviegoing still echoes decades after their television partnership began.
A Television Partnership Born at WTTW
Siskel, a critic for the Chicago Tribune, and Ebert, who wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times, taped their first movie-review show together at a WTTW studio in November 1975, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. What began as a monthly program was eventually picked up by multiple PBS stations and went weekly in the fall of 1978 under a new title, “Sneak Previews,” the paper reports. The format — two rival newspaper critics trading barbs and verdicts on the week's new releases — became a template that outlasted both men's newspaper careers and turned into a genuine piece of American television history.
Siskel died in 1999 and Ebert died in 2013, according to Arts Midwest. NBC Chicago's earlier reporting on the critics similarly notes that Ebert co-hosted his nationally televised review show with Siskel, describing Siskel as a Chicago Tribune film critic who died in 1999. Their on-screen chemistry, including the thumbs-up-or-down verdict that became their trademark, has remained part of Chicago's cultural identity even as streaming and algorithmic recommendations have reshaped how audiences decide what to watch.
Chicago Marked 50 Years of the Duo in 2025
The Prudential Plaza statue follows a string of tributes marking the 50th anniversary of Siskel and Ebert's on-air pairing. Last November, the Chicago Cultural Center launched a series of free events honoring the show widely remembered as “Siskel & Ebert,” per the Sun-Times. Around the same time, a live stage performance in Chicago marked the 50-year milestone since their first joint TV appearance, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter. That programming was developed by the city's Department of Cultural Affairs and its Chicago Film Office, according to the trade publication, which reported in November 2025 that a movie about Siskel and Ebert's time together was in development.
Chicago has honored the critics in smaller ways before. A plaque dedicated to Ebert was installed in front of the Chicago Theatre by then-Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2005, the Sun-Times notes, and the Gene Siskel Film Center has operated at 164 N. State St. for years. The forthcoming Prudential Plaza statue would mark a more physically prominent addition to that legacy, placing the two critics — and their seats — in one of downtown's busiest public spaces.
A Precedent in Ebert's Hometown
The idea of sculpting Ebert alongside actual theater seating isn't new. In Champaign, a life-sized bronze statue of Ebert was unveiled outside the Virginia Theatre, where visitors could sit in two empty theater seats beside him, according to NBC Chicago. That statue, created by Normal artist Rick Harney and titled “C-U at the Movies,” shows Ebert giving his famous thumbs-up while seated between the chairs, the station reported. A separate NBC Chicago report on the project's earlier planning stages described a proposal for Ebert to sit in the middle of three movie theater chairs giving the same gesture, with Normal artist Rick Harney selected to build it; fundraising figures cited for that campaign have varied between reports, with one NBC Chicago account citing a $112,500 campaign that was about $18,000 short of its goal and an earlier NBC Chicago report citing a $125,000 fundraising target. The Champaign statue was ultimately unveiled in 2014, per NBC Chicago.
The University of Illinois later folded that legacy into its academic offerings, commissioning the seated Ebert statue outside the Virginia Theatre and founding the Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies in 2022, according to Arts Midwest. Ebertfest, the film festival Ebert founded in his hometown, was set to return in April 2026, though organizers announced in September 2025 that the event was not sustainable in its present form, Arts Midwest reports, leaving its future beyond that date uncertain.
No details on the Prudential Plaza statue's sculptor, cost, or installation timeline have been reported. For now, Chicago's tribute to its two most famous film critics is confirmed only in outline — a bronze Siskel and Ebert, seated together in their theater chairs, set to join the skyline where they once argued over the movies that defined a generation of moviegoing.
