Movies for the rural masses

With the cineplex today an anchoring feature of almost every shopping mall, enjoying a night out at the movies is an easy option no matter whether you live in the city or the suburbs. The trend for shopping-mall cinemas has spread to the major urban centres in the provinces too but for those who live in rural areas, even if they are within easy driving distance of a small town, seeing a movie on the big screen is all too rare a treat.
Production house Kantana hopes to change all that with the opening in June of the Kantana Movie Mall. These new centres are designed to fill the yawning gap between urban and rural folk with the first phase boasting some 400 cinemas within easy reach of villages and district centres.
Kantana Group chairman Jaruek Kanjaruek explains that the Kantana Movie Mall draws on the old-time nang klang plang-nang khai ya experience of open-air screenings in villages. The programme owned less to altruism and more to marketing though, as it ensured a captive audience for the companies concerned to promote and sell their products, which usually included energy drinks, “cure all” powders and medicines.
Kantana’s Movie Malls, which are essentially mini-multiplexes that have a 50-seat capacity, will also be extremely affordable with admission to the films costing a mere Bt30. Kantana, which is investing Bt1.2 million in each outlet, has a standard design for the cinemas and will be responsible for movie projection through the “Kantana Intelligent One Touch” system, which allows the operator to do everything from dimming the lights, showing the trailers and commercials and screening the movie with just one touch from anywhere.
The signal is transmitted from the control centre to all the cinemas via dedicated satellite links using digital technology with Surround 5.1 sound systems. And there’s no room for cheating either, as Kantana will use a watermark system to monitor and prevent copyright violations if someone tries to film a video within the cinema.
According to the KantanaMovieMall.com website, each cinema owner must provide at least 200 square wah (800 square metres) of space and be responsible for the initial fee of Bt700,000, a monthly cinema operating fee of Bt15,000 and the layout and interior design fee of Bt60,000.
Though the very reasonable pricing of tickets is made possible thanks to the low cost of building the cinemas and the installing of the screening system, it difficult to see how the business can make any profit. Currently five screenings a day are planned but Jaruek is the first to admit that weekday daytime shows are unlikely to draw more than a few spectators. He is however anticipating fuller houses in the evenings and more especially at weekends.
“It’s the same everywhere, even at big multiplex franchises,” he says. “But the beauty of this model is that operators can also use the space as a training centre or exhibition area as well as for community activities.”
The Kantana Movie Malls won’t limit their functions to screening films, however. The new areas are being designed as community malls and local centres, with shops, markets and other facilities set to offer a range of activities to an often home-bound audience.
Rural audiences will be able to enjoy the same movies as Bangkok audiences but with a slight delay. Jaruek says he’s been asked by the film companies not to release the films until two weeks after their Bangkok premiere.
In most movie deals, income from ticket sales is shared equally between the film distributor and the cinema owner, but with the Kantana model, 50 per cent will go to the film distributor, 40 per cent to the theatre owner and 10 per cent to Kantana.
Jaruek is confident that the profit-sharing package will work, pointing to the hundred of millions reaped by major multiplexes in income from commercials from around 300 movie theatres nationwide.
“We will of course be selling the commercial time at a lower cost and they will run for shorter periods. I’m confident that it will still be profitable though,” says Jaruek.
When the project, originally dubbed Kantana Cineplex, was launched last year, the group was intending to have more than 1,000 movie malls all over the country. So far, deals have been reached with almost 700 operators and the first 400 cinemas will open in June, most of them in the northeast. Jaruek is currently working to expand the project to neighbouring countries and has already received the nod from operators in Vietnam, Myanmar and Indonesia.
With many rural folk living as far as 100 kilometres from their nearest cinema, the Kantana Movie Malls should at the very least draw couch potatoes from their homes and into the big screen experience.