MAGAZINE ONLINE

International Popcorn Challenge 2012

"Manager of the Year"

Cineplex Odeon

“A highly recommended series”
Talking Pictures Magazine

“An interesting new addition to the Brantwood Cinema Series”
The Cinema Exhibitors’ Association

Cineplex Odeon – An Outline History examines the roller coaster rise, fall, and re-emergence of one of North America’s more enigmatic exhibition phenomena. Co-founded in Canada in 1977 by entertainment lawyer-turned-film producer, Garth Drabinsky, together with industry veteran, Nathan A. Taylor, Cineplex Corporation had been among the first to unveil a largely unprecedented concept before the movie-going public – the cinema megaplex – opening with a ‘modest’ 18-screen theatre in downtown Toronto’s Eaton Centre shopping mall. Following a near demise, prior to the smashing of Canada’s restrictive distribution practices in 1983, came the circuit’s voracious expansion, commencing with the 1984 acquisition of Canadian Odeon Theatres and, then, between 1985-87, the wholesale absorption, Stateside, of a string of prestigious circuits, among them: Plitt Theaters, and the Septum, Essaness and Neighborhood Theaters chains. As the con-tinent’s number two exhibitor, next came alliance with America’s most powerful entertainment conglomerate, MCA/Universal whereby Cineplex, under the direction of Drabinsky, now took the company through a still more vertiginous expansion – and which, at its height, had been opening some 200 screens annually – annexing New York’s RKO-Century-Warner circuit; Washington’s Sterling Recreation Organization; and both the prestigious Walter Reade and Washington Circle chains. By 1988, too, had come Cineplex Odeon’s commitment to Britain following phase three of the exhibitor’s bid for worldwide supremacy. Under Drabinsky, who, renowned for his aggressive theatre circuit acquisitions, his introduction of class within them; and painstaking renovation of historic theatres, Cineplex Odeon had served to shake the industry into a new awareness, while at the same time raising US exhibition standards. The price for over-expansion, however, and in particular entry into ancillary entertainment fields, would result in a bitter split with MCA; the eventual ousting of chairman Drabinsky, plus a trail of debt totalling more than $600m. Then, following what would be seen as an eleventh hour intervention by Sen. Leo Kolber and vice president Allen Karp – the circuit’s new top brass from 1989 – Cineplex’ tearaway expansion became immediately reversed, its non-core assets resold, and the company’s debt crisis rapidly stemmed. Enjoying a quick, complete, recovery by as early as 1994, 1998 has seen Cineplex Odeon’s collaboration with Sony Pictures’ exhibition subsidiary, Loews Theatres, to form Loews Cineplex Entertainment, one of the world’s largest exhibitors today.

Cineplex Odeon – An Outline History looks at the birth and progress of the Canadian exhibitor, and at elements of its plush theatre circuit, built primarily upon the determination of ‘one man and a multinational’. And with the aid of some previously unpublished photographs, examined here, too, is an overview of the corporation’s fledgeling Gallery circuit, Cineplex Odeon’s short-lived UK subsidiary, the dozen locations of which became surrendered initially to Cannon in 1990. Cineplex Odeon – An Outline History, strictly limited to just 3,000 copies worldwide, has been written by BFI/National Film Theatre and CTA member, Philip Turner, with the co-operation of cur-rent Cineplex Odeon personnel, former director of North American operations, Barry Silver, and ex-Cannon Cinemas Technical Director, Alan McCann.