CinemasThe new UGC cinema in Dublin, which will open at the end of November, will have the highest number of screens in any cinema in Ireland.
The 17-screen UGC will give the French-owned chain over 60 per cent of cinema screens in Dublin city centre. The remaining 11 screens are shared between the Savoy, the Screen and the Irish Film Centre.
The first phase of the new UGC opened in September when nine new auditoriums were introduced, along with a new café-bar and a children's party room. Formerly, the four floors occupied by these were used to house the failed IMAX cinema, which closed three years ago.
The auditoriums in the old UGC are now being updated to include fourth wall screens (screens that cover all wall space) and stadium seating.
UGC has invested €13 million in the new cinema and sees the redevelopment as indicative of the general regeneration of the Parnell Street area.
The company cites improved street lighting, an expanded Penney's store - with new entrance from Parnell Street - and the recent addition of a taxi rank as examples of street-level enhancements.
"There's a lot of money being invested in this side of town," says Emer McEvoy, marketing manager of UGC in Ireland.
As well as increasing the size of the existing cinema, the aim of the new development was to make the UGC building stand out more. At the start of the project, the chain admitted that the existing cinema was "a bit lost in the streetscape".
The new cinema aims to achieve maximum visual impact, through strong exterior lighting and, most strikingly, a huge cinema banner - four storeys high - which advertises a major film on release or coming soon. The banner measures 19m x 12m and is purpose-made for UGC.
Inside, there is greater public space, more ticket booths and more facilities for disabled cinema-goers.
"A lot of care and attention has gone into ensuring that absolutely every step of the journey is access-all-areas friendly," says Ms McEvoy.
The company is confident that there are enough filmgoers in Dublin to sustain the new screens. It says that the rasion-d'être of the redevelopment was to increase the choice of films and to exhibit them for longer.
"The city centre is widely discussed throughout the industry as being under-screened. Distributors are always saying that their films are not kept on for long enough," says Ms McEvoy.
The cinema also plans to broaden its programming range to include "arthouse" films as well as the big blockbusters. This has influenced the seating capacity of individual auditoriums, which range from 92 to 404 seats.
Last year, this State had the second highest per-capita cinema attendance in Europe, after Iceland, with Dublin having the highest ratio of cinema admissions in the country.
Paul Moran of Mediaworks media advertising agency believes that cinema's popularity has increased over the last decade because it has become a far more enjoyable night out, due to investment and improvement in facilities.
"Year in year out, we've seen phenomenal growth for cinema. I don't think it's reached saturation point because there are more and more people visiting the city centre," says Moran.
Despite this, no other cinema has announced plans to expand its operations in Dublin.
A spokeswoman for Ster Century, which runs a 14-screen cinema in Liffey Valley, said a survey carried out among its customers cited the high cost of parking as a major deterrent to visiting a city centre cinema.
