10/02/2016 - By the end of 2016, the chain will manage 26 multiplexes in 18 Romanian towns

In 2016, Romania’s leading exhibitor, Cinema City, will further consolidate its leading position in the local market with the founding of four new multiplexes in Bucharest, Timişoara, Buzău and Piatra-Neamţ. By the end of the year, the chain will have multiplexes in 18 Romanian towns, totalling more than 200 screens. In 2014, 56.7% of the total number of tickets sold in Romanian cinemas were sold in a Cinema City location, according to data made public by the local National Film Center.

After investing €27 million in five new multiplexes last year, Cinema City Romania became the third-largest branch of the Israeli-based company Cineworld Group: in terms of the number of Cinema City screens, Romania follows the UK and Poland, but is ahead of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Israel, Bulgaria and Slovakia.

Cinema City currently manages Romania’s only IMAX screen. The country’s biggest multiplex (with 21 screens and more than 4,300 seats) is the AFI Cotroceni in Bucharest, also a Cinema City location. Since 2007, when the chain’s first two Romanian multiplexes were opened in the cities of Iaşi and Timişoara, Cinema City has continuously been updating its technology and now offers the only two 4DX cinemas in Romania.

Although they will help in terms of decreasing Romania’s huge number of inhabitants per screen and increasing the still-low national cinema attendance (11.11 million admissions were taken in 2015 – read the news), the next Cinema City locations will do little in terms of aiding the reception of European and domestic releases. Ever focused on revenues, the chain almost exclusively schedules Hollywood productions. For example, this week, the 21-screen AFI Cotroceni has only one European co-production on its schedule: The Danish Girl [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Paco Delgado
film profile]. On Friday, Marian Crişan’s Orizont [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marian Crisan
film profile], the first domestic release of 2016, will hit local cinemas, but it will be screened in only one of the 22 multiplexes managed by the chain in Romania.