In the midst of a pe­ri­od of re­cov­ery, Cin­e­maOne is seek­ing to boost its busi­ness through ex­pan­sion.

Last week the com­pa­ny host­ed a joint press con­fer­ence with En­deav­our Hold­ings Ltd, where it was an­nounced the com­pa­ny would be open­ing Cine­Cen­tral in the first quar­ter of 2023.

The cine­plex, which is set to cost $15 mil­lion, is set to take up the space va­cat­ed by Movi­eTowne Ch­agua­nas in 2020.

The an­nounce­ment came whilst the com­pa­ny was still prepar­ing to open its Gem­stones Lux­u­ry the­atres cine­plex at Gulf City Mall.

Cin­e­maOne’s move is bold par­tic­u­lar­ly as the in­dus­try in which it op­er­ates is still very much in a re­cov­ery pe­ri­od fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The com­pa­ny had record­ed back-to-back loss­es of $6,997,483 in fis­cal 2021 and $4,922,861 in 2020.

Those loss­es were pri­mar­i­ly a re­sult of re­stric­tions im­posed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

In 2020, the com­pa­ny’s the­atres were closed for 201 days.

In 2021, Cin­e­maOne stat­ed it suf­fered even more due to re­stric­tions im­posed on its op­er­a­tions at the time.

The com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial state­ment for the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 2021, it said, “On April 29, 2021, just over a year af­ter the ini­tial COVID-19 out­break, T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter man­dat­ed a third lock­down and full clo­sure of cin­e­mas.

“Giv­en the more acute stage of COVID-19 in­fec­tion rates at that time, T&T es­ca­lat­ed its COVID-19 re­sponse to a full State of Emer­gency (SOE) on May 15, 2021. As a re­sult, the cin­e­ma sec­tor was closed in the in­ter­est of pub­lic safe­ty for the re­main­ing bal­ance of the fis­cal 2021 pe­ri­od.

“Over­all, the com­pa­ny was ful­ly op­er­a­tional for on­ly 135 days in fis­cal 2021, al­beit with sig­nif­i­cant op­er­a­tional re­stric­tions such as a 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty lim­i­ta­tion and 10 pm clo­sure pe­ri­od.”

The com­pa­ny al­so not­ed that when the­atres were open it was al­so ham­pered by the de­ci­sion not to al­low the sale of food and bev­er­age at cin­e­ma con­ces­sion stores at cin­e­mas in April as well as the re­stric­tion on the con­sump­tion of al­co­hol in pub­lic.

While in­cur­ring these loss­es, the com­pa­ny was still com­mit­ted to work­ing on the Gulf City project af­ter se­cur­ing a lease agree­ment for the lo­ca­tion in 2019.

Con­struc­tion on the cine­plex at the La Ro­main shop­ping mall was al­so de­layed due to COVID re­stric­tions, but those gov­ern­ment man­dates al­so paved the way for Cin­e­maOne’s ac­qui­si­tion of the Ch­agua­nas spot.

In Oc­to­ber 2020, Movi­eTowne an­nounced its de­ci­sion to leave Price Plaza amid con­cerns raised by its CEO Derek Chin about the cine­plex’s “un­eco­nom­i­cal” rental agree­ment of­fered by En­deav­our dur­ing the pan­dem­ic amid non-ex­is­tent rev­enues due to the afore­men­tioned re­stric­tions and clo­sures of cin­e­mas.

En­deav­our Hold­ings called Movi­eTowne back to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble but could not con­vince Chin and the cin­e­ma chain to stay. The cine­plex closed per­ma­nent­ly in No­vem­ber 2020, with Movi­eTowne re­mov­ing its equip­ment.

When an­nounc­ing the com­ing of Cine­Cen­tral dur­ing a press con­fer­ence, Cin­e­maOne chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fice In­grid Jahra ac­knowl­edged it was too good an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pass up.

“The pan­dem­ic has giv­en us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­ter the Ch­agua­nas mar­ket, which his­tor­i­cal­ly has been the sec­ond high­est in na­tion­al box of­fice re­ceipts be­hind Port-of -Spain. Ch­agua­nas in the past en­joyed al­most 20 per cent of the box of­fice re­ceipts since the in­tro­duc­tion of the Cine­plex for­mat near­ly 20 years ago,” she told the press con­fer­ence.

“As we con­tin­ue to ex­pand our Cin­e­maOne brand in ma­jor lo­cal mar­kets, we could not be more thrilled to share our ver­sion of moviego­ing with the Ch­agua­nas com­mu­ni­ty.

“The pan­dem­ic opened doors and closed doors we took this op­por­tu­ni­ty to recog­nise that the mar­ket is a very vi­able one and we want­ed to serve it,” said Jahra.

Movi­eTowne’s de­par­ture from Price Plaza left cen­tral Trinidad with­out a movie the­atre for over two years. So­cial me­dia re­ac­tion to the news re­port of Cine­Cen­tral’s an­nounce­ment was most­ly pos­i­tive. Many re­act­ed with re­lief that there was a clos­er Cin­e­ma op­tion as op­posed to hav­ing to dri­ve to Port-of-Spain, San Fer­nan­do or Trinci­ty to catch a movie.

The ab­sence of Movi­eTowne was al­so felt by EHL, as the com­pa­ny not­ed its rev­enue dipped by over $14 mil­lion in fis­cal 2021 fol­low­ing the de­par­ture of the cine­plex.

En­deav­our chair­man John Aboud al­so con­firmed EHL had been seek­ing to re­turn 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,” said Aboud.

EHL CEO An­tho­ny Ra­hael al­so not­ed the tim­ing of the re­turn was al­so good giv­en the rapid growth be­ing seen with­in Ch­agua­nas.

Jahra al­so ex­pressed the view that the new cin­e­ma in Ch­agua­nas could eas­i­ly bring sev­er­al jobs fol­low­ing its open­ing, fur­ther boost­ing com­merce in the area.

But for now, Cin­e­maOne is still gam­bling on a full re­cov­ery of the movie in­dus­try.

In the com­pa­ny’s third quar­ter re­port for 2022, it re­port­ed a mar­gin­al op­er­at­ing prof­it of $0.4 mil­lion.

Jahra ex­plained that the the­atres had done well for ma­jor block­busters such as Mar­vel re­leas­es like Spi­der-Man No Way Home, Dr Strange in the Mul­ti­verse of Mad­ness and Top Gun Mav­er­ick. How­ev­er, over­all, she not­ed the re­turns are still not at pre-COVID lev­els.

“Our pan­dem­ic re­stric­tions didn’t re­al­ly to­tal­ly go away un­til April 4. Spi­der-Man hap­pened be­fore (that). Spi­der-Man was re­leased De­cem­ber 15. That movie is our sec­ond-best movie in terms of au­di­ences (for the year). And that was 50 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy,” said Jahra who stressed that there was enough to sug­gest bet­ter days are ahead.

“I’m gonna re­it­er­ate again, the in­dus­try is not where it was back in 2019 yet, but peo­ple are com­ing out and these signs are very healthy sig­nals.”

For now, Cin­e­maOne is hop­ing the cap­i­talise on the next ma­jor box of­fice draw: Black Pan­ther 2.

Jahra con­firmed she was hope­ful that the Gulf City cine­plex will be opened by the end of Oc­to­ber and ready to wel­come movie­go­ers by the time the high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed film opens in No­vem­ber.

“I have been get­ting emails since Au­gust, when are you go­ing to re­lease tick­ets for Black Pan­ther 2,” said Jahra.

Cin­e­maOne cur­rent­ly op­er­ates the Imax Cin­e­ma and Gem­stones lux­u­ry cin­e­mas and 4DX Cin­e­ma the­atre in One Wood­brook Place.

Jahra could not say what type of cine­plex would oc­cu­py the 26,000 square foot space at Price Plaza, but as­sured the com­pa­ny would bring a unique ex­pe­ri­ence to the area.