Evergrande To Build 200 Cinemas In Five Years in Race to Rival Wanda

An affiliate of top three Chinese developer Evergrande has vowed to open 200 cinemas in China — nearly doubling its total number of movie theatres in the coming five years, while adopting a new locally produced technology to rival the US IMAX widescreen standard.

The move positions Evergrande Cinema Line, which already operates 110 theatres, to capitalise on the rising demand of cinemas in China after the country’s annual box office receipts rose by 13.45 percent year-on-year in 2017 to reach a record RMB 55.9 billion ($8.8 billion), according to a government announcement.

Evergrande’s new big screen goal was announced earlier this week at an event in Liuzhou, Guangxi province celebrating the opening of the developer’s latest theatre in the southeastern Chinese city, and its partnership with China Film Group Corporation to roll out more widescreen theatres.

Evergrande Adopts Local Wide-Screen Tech for Theatre Expansion

Under the terms of a partnership agreement between Evergrande Cinema Line and the mainland’s largest film distributor, the Evergrande subsidiary, all 200 of Evergrande’s new cinemas will adopt the China Giant Screen (CGS) widescreen film format, which was developed by a subsidiary of state-owned China Film, according to a statement.

The move by the real estate and movie distribution duo came less than two weeks after Wang Jianlin’s Dalian Wanda Group sold off a combined 12.8 percent stake in its own theatre division, Wanda Film, to Alibaba and Beijing-based Cultural Investment Holdings for RMB 7.8 billion ($1.24 billion).

With the deal, which is an extension of a 2016 Evergrande and China Film agreement to build 100 cinemas in three years, Evergrande will become the largest partner in China Film’s widescreen initiative, as it seeks to displace Canadian-born IMAX system as the dominant wide-screen format.

While typical cinema screens measure 14 to 20 metres wide by 9 metres high (45 to 65 feet wide by 30 feet high), CGS has a ratio of 20 metres wide by 12 metres high, and IMAX uses a 22 meters wide by 16 meters high ratio.

Evergrande Cinema Line currently has 115 operating cinemas covering 95 cities across the country in 2017, which represents an increase of 40 percent from its total at the end of 2016. The cinema line currently operates 57 theatres adopting the CGS format.

Evergrande Takes Aim at Wanda’s IMAX Deal

Evergrande’s wide-screen deal will put it in direct competition with Wanda Film, which in 2016,  announced a partnership with IMAX China to build 150 IMAX cinemas by 2022. The cinema affiliate of Wanda Group already operates 525 movie theatres with a total of 4,648 screens as of the end of January.

Wanda first got into the cinema business in 2005, and its Shenzhen-listed Wanda Film managed to become China’s box office leader within five years. Evergrande followed Wanda’s lead and opened its own film division in 2010.