History

AMC Theatres was founded in 1920 by Maurice, William, Irvin, Edward, and Barney Dubinsky, sons of Russian-Jewish immigrants Simon and Sarah Dubinsky. The Dubinsky brothers had been traveling the Midwest performing melodramas and tent shows with actress Jeanne Eagels. They purchased the Regent Theatre on 12th Street between Walnut and Grand in downtown Kansas City, Missouri.^([10]) Maurice, the oldest brother, died in 1929, and Barney left the company in 1936 after being injured in an auto accident.^([11]) Edward, the youngest brother, eventually changed his last name to Durwood, and the company they formed eventually became known as Durwood Theatres, after a legal fight with his brothers.^([11]) The chain also had theaters in St. Joseph and Jefferson City, Missouri, and Leavenworth and Topeka, Kansas.^([12])

When Edward's son Stanley left the U.S. Air Force after World War II, he joined the company in 1945. He persuaded his father to build drive-in theaters in St. Joseph, Jefferson City, and Leavenworth. In 1947 they expanded further with the acquisition of the Liberty Theater in downtown Kansas City which they remodeled and renamed the Roxy.^([13]) They won an antitrust suit to enable them to show first-run product at the Roxy and went on to acquire all of the downtown cinemas in Kansas City including The Empire Theater, the Capri Theatre, the Midland Theatre and the Paramount Theatre.^([12])

In 1961, after Ed died, Stanley took control of Durwood Theatres, a small ten-theatre chain. With an interstate planned around Kansas City, Durwood looked to sites outside downtown and acquired two sites at a shopping center on Kansas City's Ward Parkway to build a 700-seat theater. As the sites could not be combined, they opened two theaters side-by-side as the Parkway Twin Theatre in 1963.^([12]) This was the company's first foray into using the multiplex model. According to Variety, Stanley Durwood later claimed in 1962 that he "was standing in the lobby of his 600-seat Roxy in Kansas City mulling over its poor grosses, when he realized he could double his box office by adding a second screen and still operate with the same size staff."^([14])

Following the success of the Parkway Twin, AMC followed up with the Embassy 3 triplex at the Country Club Plaza; the Metro Plaza, a four-screen theater in Kansas City in 1966; and a six-screen theater in Omaha in 1969.^([15])^([16])^([12])

The industry quickly embraced the multiplex concept, where additional screens meant very little difference in staff and operating costs but resulted in a significant profit increase. The concept also provided more film choices at one location, drawing bigger crowds. It also gave owners the flexibility to show big hits on more screens and less reliance on any individual film that could turn out to be a bust.^([17])

Stanley renamed Durwood Theatres as American Royal Cinema on October 1, 1968, after the American Royal livestock and horse show, but the latter's producers sought an injunction, and the name was changed to American Multi-Cinema, Inc.^([12])^([18])

Stanley began to apply military management and the insights of management science to revolutionize the movie theatre industry.^([19]) As he later explained to Variety magazine, "We needed to define what our company was doing in the (exhibition) business. My dad wasn't that organized."^([20]) It was structured under the belief that every customer was a "guest".

Growth

The AMC Empire 25 theatre in Times Square, New York City

By the 1980s, the company was experiencing strong growth; in 1983, it had its initial public offering.^([21]) AMC Theatres built its first multiplex overseas in 1985, the 10-screen multiplex at The Point, Milton Keynes, in the United Kingdom,^([21]) and later opened additional sites in the UK such as in Dudley and Tamworth, Staffordshire. In October 1988, they announced a joint venture with United Artists Theaters and Cinema International Corporation (a partnership of Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios) to run their combined cinemas in the UK, Ireland under the AMC name, however, AMC pulled out of the joint venture in December, and sold their U.K. assets, including their 12 cinemas, to the new entity (later called United Cinemas International) for $98 million and withdrew from the UK market.^([22])^([23])^([24])

In 1988, Kinepolis Brussels, the first megaplex in the world, with 25 screens and 7,600 seats, was opened by Kinepolis, the European chain.^([25])^([26])^([27])^([28])

In 1995, AMC Theatres opened the first North American megaplex, the AMC Grand 24 in Dallas, Texas, a theater complex that could accommodate thousands.^([29]) AMC continued to open other megaplex theaters, such as the AMC Hampton Towne Center 24 in Hampton, Virginia, and the chain's busiest theater in the US, the AMC Empire 25 in New York City near Times Square.

On December 13, 1996, AMC opened the Ontario Mills 30, a 30-screen theater in Ontario, California, which at the time was the largest multiplex in the world.^([21])^([30]) AMC Theatres' megaplex theatres were a success overseas as well. In April 1996, they opened Canal City 13 in Fukuoka, Japan, which was followed on December 20, 1996, by the AMC Arrábida 20 in Porto, Portugal.^([24]) In January 2002, the 16-screen Great Northern theatre was opened in Manchester in the UK, marking the chain's return to the UK market after 14 years. This was later supplemented by the opening of a 12-screen cinema on the Broadway Plaza site in Birmingham in October 2003. AMC Theatres sometimes serve a dual function; in addition to the regular cinema functions, they also cater to companies' business conferences that can make use of their projectors for displaying presentations.^([31])

In 2004, AMC Theatres was acquired by Marquee Holdings Inc., an investment vehicle controlled by affiliates of J.P. Morgan Partners, LLC, the private equity arm of JPMorgan Chase, and Apollo Global Management, a private investment firm.^([32]) At the time, AMC was publicly traded on AMEX under the code AEN.^([33])

In 2006, the company announced a new initial public offering (IPO) expected to be worth approximately $789 million;^([34]) however, adverse market conditions convinced the company's management to withdraw from such an offering on May 3, 2007.^([35]) The company filed for a $450 million IPO in its third such filing since 2006 on July 14, 2010.^([36])^([37])

Stanley Durwood died in 1999, and his successor was Peter Brown, the first non-Dubinsky/Durwood family member to head the company.^([14]) Brown, who became just the third chairman in AMC's history, served as CEO for over a decade. During his tenure, the company's revenues grew from $400 million to $2.3 billion.^([38]) Gerardo I. Lopez succeeded Brown as president and CEO of AMC Theatres on March 2, 2009.^([39]) Previously, Lopez was the Executive Vice President of President Consumer Products Group, Seattle's Best Coffee, and Foodservice at Starbucks.^([40]) Under new leadership, one of the first major announcements came in March of the same year; the company announced that it would equip 1,500 of its screens with Real D projectors.^([41]) In the same month, AMC Theatres collaborated with Sony to replace all of its reel projectors with digital cinema projectors, starting in the second quarter of 2009 and completing in 2012.^([42])

The company was formerly headquartered in downtown Kansas City. In September 2011, AMC Theatres announced plans to move its headquarters to a new $30 million four-story building designed by 360 Architecture in the Park Place development at 117th Street and Nall Avenue in Leawood, Kansas, in suburban Kansas City. Kansas had offered $47 million in incentives to get the 400 jobs to move across the Kansas/Missouri border.^([43])

After reaching a settlement with the state of Illinois regarding complaints from a disability rights organization in April 2012, AMC pledged to equip all of its theaters in the state with captioning and description services by 2014. The disability rights group had accused the company of only providing closed captioning or audio description systems at some of its locations in the state.^([44])

Showing at 860 AMC theaters worldwide may 8th.

Directed by James Cameron.

Mike drop.

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