Open­ing nights for most films are usu­al­ly a spe­cial oc­ca­sion.

But last Thurs­day, on the open­ing day of Spi­der-Man: Brand New Day, the lo­cal cin­e­ma in­dus­try ex­pe­ri­enced some­thing not seen for much of the last decade.

On open­ing day, de­spite hav­ing sev­er­al the­atres al­ready list­ed to show Brand New Day, Movi­etowne con­ces­sion­aires were telling pa­trons who were un­able to se­cure tick­ets for sold-out times to hold on, as the mul­ti­plex pro­posed to add view­ings. At One Wood­brook Place, where Cin­e­maOne’s IMAX and Gem­stone movie the­atres are lo­cat­ed, park­ing was so scarce af­ter movie­go­ers ar­rived that cus­tomers head­ing to bars and restau­rants reg­u­lar­ly had to find a space on neigh­bour­ing streets.

The op­er­a­tors of both Movi­eTowne and Cin­e­maOne con­firmed to the Busi­ness Guardian that the crowds, and the still con­tin­u­ing de­mand for Spi­der-Man and The Odyssey, had brought a lev­el of ac­tiv­i­ty to lo­cal movie the­atres not seen since be­fore COVID-19.

“The num­bers are look­ing like pre-COVID com­ing in. That would be my over­ar­ch­ing state­ment,” said co-founder and CEO of Cin­e­maONE In­grid Jahra, who ad­mit­ted that the in­dus­try and her cin­e­ma had been oth­er­wise strug­gling be­fore the surge for these movies.

“It start­ed with The Odyssey. I mean, be­cause The Odyssey was heav­i­ly mar­ket­ed that you should see it in IMAX, it brought a lot of peo­ple back to IMAX. So, that was a very good thing,” said Jahra, who ex­plained that while she did ex­pect Spi­der-man to be a draw, it had ex­ceed­ed ex­pec­ta­tions.

“Spi­der-Man was tremen­dous. I mean, I have been try­ing to see if I could have got it on an IMAX screen,” said Jahra who ex­plained her chain was not able to show it in its IMAX the­atre due to IMAX In­ter­na­tion­al not re­leas­ing the film in the re­gion.

On Mon­day, Imax In­ter­na­tion­al an­nounced that Sony Pic­tures’ Spi­der-Man: Brand New Day will ex­pand across the IMAX net­work in­to North Amer­i­ca be­gin­ning on Thurs­day, Au­gust 6 af­ter the record-break­ing num­bers seen for the film in Chi­na, Japan and South Ko­rea, where it gen­er­at­ed US$23 mil­lion at the IMAX box of­fice.

The film made US$932 mil­lion world­wide in its open­ing week­end, mak­ing it the sec­ond best week­end open­ing ever glob­al­ly be­hind Avengers: Endgame.

The ex­ten­sive de­mand for the Tom Hol­land film has led Jahra to place ad­di­tion­al screen­ings at her venues in Port of Spain, Gulf City and Price Plaza.

“I would tell you, I swapped out all my Gem­stones for Spi­der-Man. And in cen­tral, I’m go­ing to put on more shows again for Spi­der-Man. I on­ly had six dai­ly show times. I’m go­ing to knock out some more be­cause I thought peo­ple would need a lit­tle va­ri­ety,” she told Busi­ness Guardian in an in­ter­view on Mon­day.

Jahra said pri­or to the buzz gen­er­at­ed by The Odyssey and sub­se­quent­ly Spi­der-Man, there had not been any­thing near to this lev­el of ac­tiv­i­ty since Dead­pool and Wolver­ine, which re­leased in Ju­ly in 2024.

“The num­bers looked like a movie pre-COVID. We have not had those num­bers since Dead­pool and Wolver­ine. We haven’t seen those types of num­bers. And look, we’ve been through Avatar, Moana and Wicked. We’ve been through quite a few ti­tles. But noth­ing like this,” said Jahra.

In an in­ter­view on Mon­day, she said based on the de­mand at her venues, she was con­fi­dent that her com­peti­tors al­so en­joyed sim­i­lar suc­cess.

“You see how this whole week­end, in my lit­tle cir­cuit, it goes, and I have what, let’s say I have 10 screens and I did like 10,000 peo­ple. You can just imag­ine what Movi­eTowne and Cin­e­mas8 did with their big­ger screens,” she said.

“I know my com­peti­tors did very well. I know 4DX did very well. Be­cause they would have want­ed to see it in the large for­mat spe­cial screen, you know? So, I know 4DX would have done well,” said Jahra, who ex­plained what usu­al­ly ac­count­ed for a suc­cess­ful run, “But just think that usu­al­ly a good an­nu­al oc­cu­pan­cy for cin­e­ma is like 25 per cent. That’s like an an­nu­al fig­ure, right? That would be a sol­id per­cent­age. But most times, in the first two weeks you would get the ma­jor­i­ty of the cus­tomers. So, if you have 65 to 70 per cent of your seats sold, that’s a suc­cess­ful movie.”

Movi­etowne CEO Am­ri­ta Ba­boolal al­so used the word “tremen­dous” to de­scribe the im­pact of the web-slinger’s lat­est cin­e­mat­ic out­ing.

“The in­ter­est in Spi­der-Man has been tremen­dous­ly en­cour­ag­ing for us at Movi­eTowne. We knew it would be one of the biggest block­busters of the sum­mer, but the re­sponse from the pub­lic ex­ceed­ed our ex­pec­ta­tions and even sur­passed what we saw with The Odyssey,” said Ba­boolal, who con­firmed the re­sponse was be­yond the cin­e­ma’s ex­pec­ta­tions de­spite hav­ing themed events and com­mu­ni­ty plans around the movie.

“Thou­sands of pa­trons came out over the course of the week, and the en­er­gy was in­cred­i­ble. What made it es­pe­cial­ly mean­ing­ful is that we have not seen crowds of this mag­ni­tude since be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic,” said Ba­boolal. “For the en­tire Movi­eTowne fam­i­ly, this was about much more than a movie. The in­creased foot traf­fic ben­e­fit­ted our ten­ants across the com­plex, and many of them ex­pressed how hap­py they were to see the re­turn of large crowds and strong cus­tomer ac­tiv­i­ty. You could feel the pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic im­pact through­out the prop­er­ty, from the restau­rants and re­tail stores to the en­ter­tain­ment spaces.”

The Movi­etowne CEO, who had pre­vi­ous­ly told the Busi­ness Guardian that the com­pa­ny was look­ing to build on mo­men­tum from World Cup view­ing events with a sim­i­lar ap­proach for the up­com­ing Caribbean Pre­mier League, al­so ex­pressed op­ti­mism that this push would re­vive the cul­ture of view­ing movies in cin­e­mas.

“The at­mos­phere through­out the week­end was vi­brant and joy­ful. The ar­cade was busy, chil­dren were every­where, live DJs kept the en­er­gy high, and pa­trons were en­joy­ing the full Movi­eTowne ex­pe­ri­ence, from food and en­ter­tain­ment to the movie it­self. For our team, it was gen­uine­ly re­ward­ing to watch months of plan­ning and hard work come to life and to see peo­ple leav­ing with smiles on their faces,” said Ba­boolal, “This re­sponse has giv­en us re­newed con­fi­dence in the strength of the cin­e­ma and en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try. It was beau­ti­ful to wit­ness peo­ple com­ing to­geth­er again, sup­port­ing busi­ness­es, en­joy­ing qual­i­ty en­ter­tain­ment, and bring­ing that pre-pan­dem­ic en­er­gy back to Movi­eTowne.”

It has been a chal­leng­ing pe­ri­od for both chains. In Jan­u­ary, Movi­eTowne shut down its To­ba­go cine­plex for good, while, de­spite im­prov­ing rev­enues in 2025, Cin­e­maOne still re­port­ed a loss of $9.2 mil­lion. Cin­e­maOne is list­ed on the T&T Stock Mar­ket.

Jahra, like Ba­boolal, felt there were signs that movie­go­ers might be en­cour­aged to re­turn for the right films, point­ing to sus­tained in­ter­est in the biopic Michael, which had re­mained open at Cin­e­maOne the­atres up to late last month.

“We were like, when are we go­ing to see some­thing that’s mak­ing us feel ex­cit­ed? Now, what made us feel a lit­tle ex­cit­ed was Michael. But it was steady. It wasn’t like this,” said Jahra, who was hop­ing that the com­pa­ny would kick on with this buzz as it al­so looked for­ward to late-year re­leas­es in­clud­ing Dune and Avengers: Doom­day, al­though Jahra con­firmed, like Spi­der-Man, the Mar­vel film had not been green­lit for an IMAX screen­ing in this re­gion.