CGR Cinemas Looks to Democratize Premium Format at Home and Abroad

variety.com:

Ben Croll CGR Cinemas, France’s second largest exhibitor, has built a reputation on technological innovation, leading the charge in the local market as the first multiplex chain to digitize every one of its screens back in 2007.

Since then, the privately held company has become a vocal and energetic evangelist for the premium format, touting its proprietary Immersive Cinema Experience (ICE) model both at home and in a growing number of territories abroad. “No matter the case, the future of filmgoing is tied to the Premium Large Format (PLF),” says CGR managing director Jocelyn Bouyssy. “The more that people go to the movies, the more they’ll end up discovering PLF rooms, and the more they’ll want to come back.

That’s my philosophy.” When Bouyssy launched CGR’s initial modernization campaign, he did so with the 2009 release of “Avatar” in mind, lending a degree of poetic symmetry to the record-setting premium admissions pulled in by last year’s sequel, “Avatar: The Way of Water.” Between the two films, CGR Cinemas developed, implemented and began exporting its ICE model – an in-house design that outfits a row of LED panels on both sides of an auditorium and fills them with bespoke visuals extending the action onscreen (“It’s like surround sound but for light,” is how an ICE exec describes it).

For ICE Theaters – CGR Cinema’s export arm – the two year lead up to Cameron’s sci-fi sequel coincided with a period of intense international growth, as the La Rochelle-based chain forged partnerships with exhibitors across the globe to open ICE-formatted theaters in North America, the Middle East, Europe and Asia.