Cinema for Sale: The Impact of the Multiplex on Cinema-going in Britain, 1985-2000

The following survey of the multiplex cinema in Britain over the last fifteen years approaches this distinctive exhibition phenomenon in terms of cultural consumption and film production. The first section explores some of the implications for audience studies of the new cinema, pinpointing the significance of the retail/leisure complex location of many multiplexes; it links this to both theories of consumption and recent demographic data, suggesting that this revitalisation of cinema is attracting an older, female audience. Part two considers the distinctive nature of the multiplex exhibition site with its emphasis on the branding and selling of cinema as an event, in the context of the continuing dominance of the British market by Hollywood films and American-owned distributors. It hypothesises a multiplex product and concludes that the mainstream form of ‘high concept’, ‘dispersible’ and disposable film fare, while admirably suited to the ‘fast-food’ processing of the multiplex machine, may ultimately fail to deliver the kind of diversity of product it purports to offer and needs to develop if its rapid proliferation is to be sustained.