Word: cineplex
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Drabinsky's Cineplex is a one-man marching band. No one can speak for the company but the boss. He logs half a million miles a year, inspiring the troops and scouting new acquisitions. The guy never rests, and when he does, he pays for it. Three weeks ago, while on a rare vacation with his wife and two children in Antigua, Drabinsky broke his arm, "totally, right through." A quick bone grafting and plate insertion, and he was back in business. "It hurts, sure," he says, "but I like...
...Cineplex Odeon has fulfilled Drabinsky's promise to "upgrade moviegoing to the greatest extent possible and ask the customer to pay for it." You will pay for the tuxedos and the yuppie snacks and the crisp Lucasfilm THX sound system. In Manhattan Cineplexes, you will pay $7 -- a price tag that has stoked public and official outrage. This week the New York State Assembly is expected to pass a measure that would require exhibitors to print admission prices in all newspaper ads and thus encourage theater owners to keep their costs down. Drabinsky is unmoved by the hubbub. The alternative...
...effort to create an image of Cineplex Odeon as the class act of exhibitors, Drabinsky has spent $30 million spiffing up his 30 Manhattan venues. But he has earned at least that much in negative press with the ticket hike and with last September's shuttering of the Regency, the city's treasured revival house. There was a rally and a petition with 30,000 signers. To Drabinsky, the protesters were "publicity seekers" and their pleas "absurd." He plans to showcase revivals at a smaller midtown theater. "We made the Regency a lot newer, and it will gross almost four...
Drabinsky has never shied away from a fight. As a child with polio, he had to fight for his life; he still walks with a limp. In Cineplex's early days, he barely averted bankruptcy when Canada's reigning circuits, Famous Players and Odeon, pressured distributors to withhold first-run films from the fledgling company. But in 1983 Drabinsky, a lawyer who had written a standard reference on Canadian motion-picture law, convinced the courts that Famous and Odeon were engaging in restraint of trade. A year later he bought the Odeon chain, but his battle with Famous still rages...
Will Drabinsky's pit-bull perseverance play in Hollywood? Already he has tangled with one of the major studios, canceling 140 play dates of Columbia's Leonard Part 6 after the studio "broke its commitment to us" and pulled The Last Emperor from Cineplex theaters. The air thickened with threats, and as of now, Drabinsky says, "the two corporations are not doing business together." Viewing all these skirmishes, one industry solon is impressed but skeptical. "Drabinsky is very bright and articulate," he says, "but he's also very arrogant. Other exhibitors watch from afar as he builds his Taj Mahals...