{"id":5554,"date":"2013-02-16T12:05:49","date_gmt":"2013-02-16T20:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/?p=5554"},"modified":"2013-02-16T12:05:49","modified_gmt":"2013-02-16T20:05:49","slug":"local-news-cineplex-buys-festival-cinemas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2013\/02\/local-news-cineplex-buys-festival-cinemas.html","title":{"rendered":"Local news: Cineplex buys Festival Cinemas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>The first daytime press screening I can remember attending took place at the Varsity Theatre in February 1994. It was for a British film called The Summer House<\/i> \u2014 one of Lena Headey\u2019s earliest starring roles \u2014 and the theatre in question was, at that time, run by a local outfit called Festival Cinemas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A few years later, one of my first writing gigs, outside of the campus newspapers, was a series of articles that ran in Festival Magazine<\/i>, one of two short-lived publications that were distributed at Festival Cinemas theatres between 1997 and 1998.<\/p>\n

By that point, the Festival \u201cchain\u201d consisted of three theatres, one of which was the newly-built five-screen Fifth Avenue multiplex. And, at the time, most of the other first-run theatres in town were run by two national companies, Famous Players and Cineplex, that had pretty much owned the local theatre scene since I was a kid \u2014 though a new company entered the mix in 1999, when Cinemark opened a 12-screen theatre in downtown Vancouver called the Tinseltown. (I once attended a press conference with Arnold Schwarzenegger there prior to the release of The Sixth Day<\/i>, which had been filmed in Vancouver \u2014 and I got a kick out of the fact that, in one scene, an ambulance drove right past the very theatre that we were sitting inside.)<\/p>\n

And then, things got complicated. Festival Cinemas was sold to Alliance-Atlantis Cinemas, which was partly owned by Famous Players. And then, in June 2005, Cineplex bought Famous Players<\/a> \u2014 a sale that was permitted by the Competition Bureau on condition that Cineplex re-sell some of its theatres after the merger. And so Festival Cinemas returned<\/a> as an independent entity (acquiring the previously-independent Ridge Theatre along the way<\/a>), while a handful of other theatres were sold to Empire, a national chain that had never had a presence in Vancouver before.<\/p>\n

That diversity has gradually faded away, though.<\/p>\n

In November 2010, Cineplex took over the Tinseltown theatre<\/a>, so Cinemark is no longer a part of the Vancouver landscape.<\/p>\n

Then, in 2012, Empire closed both of its theatres in Vancouver: the Oakridge<\/a> and the Granville<\/a>, the latter of which had been host to the Vancouver International Film Festival<\/a> for several years. (Empire continues to operate theatres in Surrey and North Vancouver, two regions that are separated from Vancouver proper by rivers.)<\/p>\n

And now, reports the CBC<\/a>, Cineplex has re-acquired Festival Cinemas \u2014 thus giving Cineplex a virtual monopoly on the Vancouver movie-theatre scene. And this, less than two weeks after Festival had to close the Ridge Theatre entirely<\/a>. (The Varsity, for its part, was torn down way back in 2006.)<\/p>\n

There is still some<\/i> diversity within the city, thank goodness, in the form of the Pacific Cinematheque<\/a> and the VanCity Theatre<\/a>, both of which are run by non-profit societies that provide a great showcase for world cinema new and old. And, far from the downtown core but still within Vancouver proper, there are still independent neighbourhood venues such as the Rio<\/a>, the Collingwood<\/a> and the Dunbar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But still. It feels like an era has ended, again.<\/p>\n

(Note: The fourth paragraph in this post links back to three earlier blog posts of mine, in which I discuss other memories of mine associated with these theatres. All the other links in this post, however, are to websites and news stories outside of this blog.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first daytime press screening I can remember attending took place at the Varsity Theatre in February 1994. It was for a British film called The Summer House \u2014 one of Lena Headey\u2019s earliest starring roles \u2014 and the theatre in question was, at that time, run by a local outfit called Festival Cinemas. A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[702,703,701,704,705,706],"class_list":["post-5554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-cineplex","tag-famous-players","tag-festival-cinemas","tag-sixth-day","tag-summer-house-1993","tag-vancouver"],"yoast_head":"\nLocal news: Cineplex buys Festival Cinemas<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The first daytime press screening I can remember attending took place at the Varsity Theatre in February 1994. 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