Seeking to capitalize on Ukrainians never-ending love of cinema, the country’s largest movie theater chain, Multiplex, is to expand its network across the country significantly through 2019, company executives said on Jan. 8.
The company plans to expand its overall network by almost 30 percent, adding 40 new cinemas to its existing network of 129 theaters, according to Multiplex co-owner Volodymyr Trofymenko, as reported by news agency Interfax-Ukraine.
“Today Multiplex is the leader in the cinema market of the country: the company has 129 cinema halls and occupies more than 35 percent of the country’s film screening market. Our main goal for 2019 is to expand the network by 30 percent,” Trofymenko told reporters.
Multiplex-Holding PJSC has also revised the membership of its holding company’s supervisory board, according to Trofymenko, who said they are tasked with building a strategy for the sustainable development of the cinema network.
Vladyslav Burda, of the RedHead Family Corporation, now heads the board, Vladyslav Chechotkin from e-commerce giant Rozetka has taken over responsibility for e-commerce, and Maksym Bakhmatov of UNIT.city is in charge of business development.
“Now our task is to approve plans for the year and monitor their implementation, so that in six months we can report on the results. The client service will gradually improve, the mobile application and the company’s fixed assets will be updated, another 40 network cinema halls will open, and so on,” Trofymenko told Interfax-Ukraine.
As the Kyiv Post reported in December 2018, Multiplex recently signed a contract with Kyiv’s central, up-market TSUM shopping center to open a premium movie theater there.
The TSUM shopping center is located on Kyiv’s central Khreschatyk Street, and is likely to become a popular destination for moviegoers in the city center, who currently have few options when it comes to centrally-located, modern movie theaters.
“We’ve signed a contract with TsUM… Look out for the most central and coolest cinema in the country next summer,” Multiplex CEO Vitaliy Pysarenko wrote on his Facebook page in late December.
While the global movie theater industry continues to face competitive challenges from on-demand television, piracy and streaming, the sector is still healthy, with Ukrainian cinema being no exception.
According to statistics from UNESCO, Ukrainian cinema admissions have remained steady and healthy over the past few years, at about 15 million theater admissions per year.
