12/11/2010

Polish movie theatre network Centrum Filmowe Helios, which at the end of August unveiled its plan to open seven new multiplexes, is clearly thriving for it has just announced its intention to build ten more complexes. These multiplexes will be based in shopping centres in major cities (Warsaw, Lodz), as well as in towns of no more than 70,000 inhabitants like Lomza, Mielec and Kedzierzyn-Kozle.

Centrum Filmowe Helios CEO Tomasz Jagiello commented: "If all the shopping centres planned by our partners are completed in time, we will open 17 new multiplexes before the end of 2014, i.e. 96 screens and almost 21,000 seats".

At the same time as these openings, Helios also plans to increase its number of digital projectors (particularly those equipped for 3D screenings) in its currently operating theatres (24 multiplexes and two traditional cinemas). The aim is to install 133 new projectors over the next three years.

Helios’s competitor, the Multikino network (21 multiplexes in Poland and two abroad: in Riga, Latvia and in Vilnius, Lithuania), has also announced a technological revolution: all its theatres are to be equipped with digital projectors before 2013.

"For the moment, we have 295 projectors of this kind and the number is rapidly increasing," said Multikino CEO Piotr Zygo. "Of the ten major hits of last year, six were 3D films. It’s not necessary for all titles to arrive in theatres with this technology, which is a plus especially for animated films and blockbusters. But this is the direction cinema is going in. And with our theatres equipped with digital projectors, we’re no longer thinking about just films: soon we will also be offering sport, concerts and competitions between cities in the form of digital games."

(Translated from French)