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A New Multiplex Is Aiming to Capture a Bilingual Audience
New York Times
By DAVID BERNSTEIN
Published: August 1, 2005

As a child living in East Los Angeles, Moctesuma Esparza, a veteran film and television producer, would often go with his father to see classic Mexican movies or the latest Hollywood fare at the Million Dollar Theater, the Orpheum or other movie palaces downtown.

Latino moviegoers "want to see movies where they get to see themselves," said Moctesuma Esparza, who is betting that his theaters will attract audiences despite box-office declines.

"In southern California, there were 40 theaters that played Spanish-language movies when I was growing up," said Mr. Esparza, 56, who produced "Selena," "Price of Glory," "Gods and Generals," "Gettysburg" and other films. "If you look at Latino communities all over the country now, there are no modern entertainment centers; they no longer exist."
Last Friday Mr. Esparza opened the first multiplex of the Maya Cinemas, a theater chain he dreamed up five years ago to serve the growing number of Latino moviegoers. The 14-screen, 2,900-seat theater is located in Salinas, Calif., a farming community where two-thirds of the population is Latino.

Like the Magic Johnson Theaters chain, which operates in five predominantly black or mixed neighborhoods, Maya Cinemas will offer first-run Hollywood films. But in each theater, one or two screens will be set aside for Spanish-language or other foreign and independent films. Latino moviegoers, Mr. Esparza said, "want to see movies where they get to see themselves."

Mr. Esparza has big expansion plans for the chain; by next year, he expects to add new multiplexes, totaling 65 screens, in Bakersfield and Inglewood, Calif., and in Santa Fe and Santa Ana Pueblo, N.M. "Our plan is to build six, seven facilities with 14 to 20 screens a year to get around 500 screens," he said.

But industry analysts say building a theater circuit is expensive and risky. It was only a few years ago that Regal, Loews and a dozen other movie chains filed for bankruptcy court protection; the multiplex construction binge of the late 1990's created a glut of screens. Michael Harpster, a former executive at New Line Cinema who now consults on marketing movies to Latinos and other audiences, said he believed that Maya Cinemas "should work."

"But the theater business is the theater business," he said.
Mr. Esparza, who has been an outspoken promoter of Latino films, points to the huge growth of the Latino population in the United States, which now numbers more than 40 million. Some forecasts say that by 2100, one in three Americans will be of Latino heritage. And according to the Motion Picture Association of America, Latinos are the most active moviegoing ethnic group, averaging about 11 films a year each; non-Latinos go to the movies only about half as much.

In many respects, Maya Cinemas theaters will be similar to other big-chain multiplexes: huge screens, plush stadium seating and state-of-the-art sound and projection systems. As for concessions, there will be all the standard movie fare - popcorn, candy and hotdogs - plus some Latino favorites like burritos and churros.

All of the theaters will be outfitted with grand lobbies and colorful Mayan motifs, which Mr. Esparza said was intended as a throwback to the movie palaces he recalls from his youth, such as the Chinese, Egyptian and Mayan theaters in Hollywood. And since movies are often family activities for Latinos, there will be "cry rooms," separate seating areas where parents with young children can watch movies without disturbing other moviegoers.

But Mr. Esparza is planning to build theaters as box-office attendance has been declining. Through July 17, ticket sales were down about 7 percent from a year ago, and attendance during this summer's blockbuster season was off 13 percent, according to Exhibitor Relations Company, which tracks box-office results.

Mr. Esparza bristled at any suggestion of a box-office slump. "It's a phenomenon of people having short-term vision as to what's going on and saying, 'Wow, gee, we're down from last summer,' " he said. "But last summer we were huge."

He also dismissed arguments that technologies like TiVo, video games, DVD's, video-on-demand and the Internet are keeping more moviegoers at home. "Everybody's got a kitchen," he said. "But the restaurant business continues to grow."

Even so, previous efforts to tap into Latino audiences have had mixed success at best.

Cinema Latino, which opened in 2001, operates four Spanish-language multiplexes that show first-run Hollywood films that are either dubbed or subtitled. With locations spread about in Texas, Arizona and Colorado, the fledgling chain has already closed two theaters in Las Vegas and Colorado Springs, Colo., though the company said it had plans to expand to 10 to 15 large and midsize urban markets.

Metropolitan Theaters, a chain based in Los Angeles that was among the first and largest exhibitors to show Spanish-language films, plays Spanish-language or subtitled films on just 5 of its 106 screens. Last fall, Clearview Cinemas, which operates 54 movie venues in the New York area, converted one of its single-screen theaters on the Upper West Side to an all-Spanish-language theater and renamed it Cinema Latino. It did not attract enough moviegoers and soon switched back to first-run films.
Steve Siskind, a marketing executive at Paramount Pictures, said industry insiders had been scratching their heads for years trying to figure out the best ways to connect with Latino audiences. The Latino market, he said, is very fragmented: Latinos of Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican and Central or South American descent have distinct cultural differences. "To do it right, it's very tricky," he said. "The Latino market is not a homogeneous group that feels the same way about music or movies or even the actors they like."

Mr. Esparza continues to produce films as well. A new venture, Maya Pictures, a spinoff from Esparza-Katz Productions, the company he set up with producer Robert Katz, has a multiple-film deal with HBO. The company's first project, "Walkout," began filming earlier this month. The film is based on the true story of the Chicano walkouts of 1968, when 20,000 East Los Angeles high school students went on strike for several days, demanding better schools. Mr. Esparza, a fiery activist at the time, helped organize the walkouts.

"I'm going to premiere my movies in my own theaters - and bring the stars," Mr. Esparza said. "It's a return to the old Hollywood tradition."

 

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