For over two years, it has not been pos­si­ble to go to the cin­e­ma in Ch­agua­nas.

In 2023, this will change as Cin­e­maOne and En­deav­our hold­ing have reached a deal to re­open a cine­plex at the lo­ca­tion pre­vi­ous­ly oc­cu­pied by Movi­etowne Ch­agua­nas.

“To­day Cin­e­maOne is ex­cit­ed to an­nounce as part of the ex­pan­sion of our port­fo­lio na­tion­wide, the launch of our third cine­plex lo­ca­tion, Cine­Cen­tra at Price Plaza,” said In­grid Jahra at a press con­fer­ence held at the Brix Col­lec­tion Ho­tel in St. Ann’s, Port of Spain on Tues­day.

She con­firmed the new cine­plex will cost $15 mil­lion dol­lars.

Jahra ad­mit­ted the Cin­e­ma in­dus­try was still on the road to re­cov­ery de­spite promis­ing re­turns from block­busters since De­cem­ber 2021 but said com­ing to Ch­agua­nas was a huge op­por­tu­ni­ty as it was the sec­ond largest mar­ket af­ter Port of Spain, earn­ing 20 per cent of box of­fice sales.

“Why did we de­cide to do it at Ch­agua­nas at this time? The op­por­tu­ni­ty, as I al­so ex­pressed in my speech. Ch­agua­nas is the sec­ond largest mar­ket af­ter Port of Spain and as the pan­dem­ic opened doors and closed doors we took this op­por­tu­ni­ty to rec­og­nize that mar­ket is a very vi­able one and we want­ed to serve it,” said Jahra.

Cin­e­maOne cur­rent­ly op­er­ates the IMax Cin­e­ma and Gem­stones lux­u­ry cin­e­mas and 4DX Cin­e­ma the­atre in One Wood­brook Place and is cur­rent­ly host­ing test screen­ings at its sec­ond Gem­stones cine­plex in Gulf City Mall.

Jahra said the com­pa­ny planned to of­fi­cial­ly open the Gulf City cin­e­mas at the end of Oc­to­ber.

She how­ev­er could not yet say what type of screens or cin­e­mas would be in­stalled at the new cine­plex.

“What we promise to do is to bring ex­cit­ing tech­nol­o­gy to the Ch­agua­nas com­mu­ni­ty. Can we say what slice of it is yet? Not just yet. But we know that what­ev­er we do of­fer, it will be right for the peo­ple of Ch­agua­nas,” Jahra told the news con­fer­ence.

Cen­tral Trinidad has been with­out a na­tive cin­e­ma op­tion since Movi­etowne an­nounced its de­ci­sion to leave Price Plaza in Oc­to­ber 2020 as Movi­etowne CEO Derek Chin raised con­cerns about the “un­eco­nom­i­cal” rental agree­ment in the midst of the pan­dem­ic and non-ex­is­tence rev­enues due to ex­tend­ed clo­sures with­in the Cin­e­ma in­dus­try. De­spite En­deav­our Hold­ing urg­ing Movi­etowne back to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble, Chin and the Cin­e­ma chain fi­nal­ly re­moved their equip­ment and closed the cine­plex per­ma­nent­ly in No­vem­ber 2020.

En­deav­our Chair­man John Aboud con­firmed the group had been fo­cused on re­turn­ing a cine­plex to Price Plaza.

“We have been look­ing for the right ten­ant since the last ten­ant va­cat­ed and I think we have achieved what we all want­ed, be­cause we were al­ways fo­cus­ing on try­ing to get the area oc­cu­pied by the Cine­plex in terms of cre­at­ing the kind of syn­er­gies with­in the plaza so the short an­swer is yes, of course, we are,” said Aboud.

—Pe­ter Christo­pher