Two former Cinetopia employees told The Columbian on Wednesday that AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. is purchasing the company, and the closure this week of the local luxury theaters is part of a transition that began several weeks ago with a round of layoffs among Cinetopia’s kitchen and server staff.
The former employees’ statements followed The Columbian’s report that the three local Cinetopias as well as another in suburban Kansas City, Kan., have closed, leaving moviegoers with no indication of when they might reopen — or why they shut their doors.
There’s no official word on what’s happening. A spokesman for Overland Park, Kan.-based AMC declined to comment on Wednesday. Attorneys for AMC and Cinetopia have not responded to requests for comment about a lawsuit Cinetopia filed a year ago against AMC.
But all signs appear to indicate AMC — the largest movie theater operator in the United States and the world, with an estimated 1,000 theaters and 11,000 screens — is purchasing Cinetopia, which got its start 14 years ago in Vancouver.
The two employees who spoke with The Columbian described changes at their theaters linked to AMC.
Erik Hendrix, a former Vancouver Mall theater employee, said co-workers were called to an all-staff meeting Monday, April 29, and told Cinetopia would be merging with AMC and kitchen and service staff would be laid off. Hendrix said he was among 20 to 30 employees who were let go.
“It felt like a very hostile takeover,” he said.
Cinetopia’s management held the meeting but an AMC official was present, Hendrix said. The concession counter and bar staff were retained, Hendrix said. He said it appeared the kitchen staff and servers were laid off because AMC did not intend to continue food service.
Darshan Sreshta, a former kitchen employee at the Mill Plain and Vancouver Mall locations, said AMC officials visited those Cinetopias weeks before that meeting. At that time, he said, employees were told not to worry about a potential merger.
Hendrix and Sreshta noted the layoffs came after the opening weekend of “Avengers: Endgame,” the final culminating film in Marvel’s “Avengers” movie series, which broke numerous box office records and earned more than $357 million in U.S. theaters in that first weekend.
“They put us through all the stress of that movie coming out,” Sreshta said, “and then they let everyone go right after the initial rush.”
Most AMC theaters sell typical movie theater concession stand food and drinks, though the company offers restaurant-style meals akin to Cinetopia’s services at about 40 of its locations, known as AMC DINE-IN theaters. None of those theaters is in Washington or Oregon, according to the company’s website.
AMC operates roughly a dozen theaters in the Puget Sound area and a handful of others in Washington, but none in Clark County. And it has a theater in Corvallis — its only presence in Oregon.
Earlier this week, an employee at Cinetopia’s Beaverton, Ore., headquarters said the closures were prompted by a “deep cleaning” of the theaters and declined to elaborate. A phone call to the headquarters Wednesday went unanswered.
Cinetopia’s founder, Rudyard Coltman, has not returned calls for comment. Coltman began operating another Portland theater last year called Studio One, which is a separate entity from Cinetopia but offers a similar luxury moviegoing experience.
Coltman appears to have partially stepped away from Cinetopia in recent years. It’s unclear what role he plays in the company’s current operations. The Oregon Secretary of State’s business website indicates Warren Stone — whose LinkedIn webpage lists him as Cinetopia’s vice president of finance — has replaced Coltman as the company’s registered agent, though Coltman is still listed as a manager.
It was unclear Wednesday what Cinetopia customers should do with gift cards or tickets. Cinetopia staff could not be reached for comment. But a representative at the Northeast 84th Street Costco in Vancouver said the store’s service counter would offer refunds for tickets purchased at its Vancouver locations.
Ongoing lawsuit
The closure and news of the potential merger comes at a crucial point in Cinetopia’s lawsuit against AMC, filed May 4, 2018, in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan.
In the lawsuit, Cinetopia accused AMC of deliberately damaging the May 23, 2014, opening of the Cinetopia in Overland Park, Kan., by employing a practice called “clearance,” in which bigger theaters refuse to screen new movies unless distributors agree to withhold the movies from smaller nearby competing theaters during the opening week.
However, the two companies appear to be moving toward a settlement after telling a federal judge May 9 they expected a resolution by Friday. The links between the theater closures and the court case are unknown. Attorneys for both sides have not returned The Columbian’s emails and phone calls over the past two weeks.
The Overland Park Cinetopia is located near an AMC theater and within three miles of AMC’s corporate headquarters. The losses at the Overland Park theater exceeded Cinetopia’s profits at the three Portland-area locations and placed the company in financial jeopardy, the lawsuit alleges.
Cinetopia also alleges that AMC made several prior offers to buy all or part of Cinetopia, starting with a 2013 offer to buy the Overland Park location before it opened. Cinetopia’s lawsuit accused AMC of bad-faith negotiating tactics, saying the company offered progressively lower purchase prices than initially discussed.
The tone of the legal proceedings changed in March when both parties told a judge that they were moving toward a settlement and requested that the rest of the case be delayed.
