Multiplex cinema

The usual origin story is American. In 1963 AMC opened the two-screen Parkway Twin in Kansas City. Its president, Stanley Durwood, later said he realised a second screen could double a theater's revenue while running with the same size staff. The history goes on through larger and larger sites: AMC's ten-screen cinema at The Point in Milton Keynes in 1985, often credited with turning round UK attendance, and Kinepolis Brussels in 1988, which grew to 25 screens and is often called the first megaplex.

There is no agreed line between a multiplex and a megaplex. Some definitions put it at 16 screens with stadium seating, others at 24.

Two advantages, both operational. First, shared infrastructure: one box office, one concession stand, one projection booth corridor and one manager serve every auditorium. Second, rooms of different sizes let the cinema match capacity to demand. A big opening plays the large room on Saturday night and moves to a smaller one on Tuesday, and a title that would fill nobody's single screen can still earn a slot.

That flexibility is also the management challenge. With many screens and staggered start times, the programme becomes a puzzle of auditorium sizes, occupancy, cleaning gaps and concession peaks. A booking that adds a screen for a hit also adds a KDM for that screen. The showtime planner and film programming cover the scheduling side.

A multiplex lives on throughput: fast ticketing, short concession queues and online sales that move buyers past the counter. For multi-site operators the questions shift to central pricing, shared loyalty and one set of reports across sites, covered on the cinema chain software page. Screen and site counts by country are in how many movie theaters there are.