In Moscow, the Eastman Kodak Company and Golden Ring Entertainment (GRE) have announced plans to open a 480-seater cinema on Pushkin Square. The Kuhomup Cinema is scheduled to open in early September with state-of-the-art projection and a modern digital surround system. Through this project, Kodak is making its first investment in the exhibition business and will partner GRE who will manage the facility.
The Kuhomup Cinema will be housed in an enclosed entertainment complex on Pushkin Square, opposite the world's busiest McDonald's. The complex also contains a food court, a Hollywood studio merchandise shop, and an imaging store offering a range of Kodak films, cameras and other image-related products. "This cinema will combine the ambience of a classic theatre with the most modern technology available for exhibiting movies on a 40 foot wide screen," said Ray Markovich, president and CEO of GRE. "It will be the best cinema experience in Russia, featuring first-run movies from Hollywood, European and Russian studios."
As recently as the late 1980s there were 120,000 screens in Russia and the people averaged 16 cinema visits a year. Today there are fewer than 1,500 theatres and none have more than one screen.
o In the meantime, Sony Theatres, the seventh largest theatre circuit in the US with 850 screens in 145 locations, has completed the renovation of the six-screen Sony Theatres 84th Street, located in New York on Broadway at 84th Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The renovation of the theatre, which opened in 1985 and consistently ranks as one of the highest-grossing theatres per screen in the world, was designed to add excitement to the overall "movie-going" experience.
The centrepiece of the renovation is a new concession stand, which features a 20 foot high "superbucket" of popcorn with basketball-size kernels that actually pop in the air. There are also accompanying soda cups standing over three metres tall which contribute to this homage to the world's view of the classic American movie-going experience. All six auditoriums have been updated with brand new oversized rocking chair seats and Sony Dynamic Digital Sound is now available on two of the screens.
Sony Theatres have also opened the four-screen Sony Theatres State on Broadway at 45th Street within the new Virgin Megastore in Times Square.
Christopher Pickard
