Cineplex profits prove that movies are still bigger than Wal-Mart

A nine per cent boost at the snack bar — averaging $4.15 in concession sales from every captive ticket buyer —  helped produce record profits for Cineplex Entertainment, whose 1338 screens in 130 locations generated more revenue than ever this summer, while its co-founder Garth Drabinsky was being sentenced to seven years in jail. Those newfangled 3D and IMAX films are credited for their contribution to a $20.4 million 3Q profit. The path to this take was full of twists: Ellis Jacob, ousted from his office at Cineplex in 1998 when it was sold to U.S.-based Loews after Drabinsky lost his grip, used his severance to start multiplex mini-chain Galaxy Entertainment in smaller markets starved for entertainment ever since the local bijou closed down. “I asked some of the kids what it meant to them,” Jacob told Playback after watching the lineup to see Spider-Man in Cornwall in 2002. “They said, ‘Hey dude, this is bigger than Wal-Mart.’” Cineplex, meanwhile, couldn’t sell enough popcorn in the early-2000s — all those shopping mall cinemas were showing their age — so help was needed from equity investment firm Onex, which invested heavily in the Galaxy gambit, leading to a reunion merger in 2003. A couple years later, Jacob snapped up the old-school Famous Players chain, and its gaudy archipelagos developed by over-leveraged owner Viacom. The evolution also involved shuttering the postage stamp screening rooms at the Eaton Centre, while handing over the bargain-basement neon of multiplexes like Market Square to Edmonton-based Rainbow Cinemas. Remaining an urban curiosity are sleepier first-generation Cineplexes you can only assume aren’t kept running for sentimental reasons alone: perennial art house the Carlton, and the retiree-friendly Canada Square at Yonge and Eglinton — which, if by accident of this corporate poker game, has the last marquee in town branded by Famous Players.