Is Luxury the Ticket?

The package at the Paradise in Davie, Fla., is an Egyptian-themed extravaganza. Moviegoers follow the purple-tiled pattern of the Nile between hieroglyph-covered pillars into the lobby. Parents can leave kids in supervised playrooms. Inside the auditoriums, guests navigate wide aisles to reach red-velvet seats. At the Boca Raton Palace, Premiere customers--21 or older, please--get their own entrance to a chandeliered bar and restaurant that serves Vietnamese crab-stuffed artichoke ($16) and Black Angus beef fillet ($32). The concession stand has sushi and Taittinger Brut.

Hashemi says that privately held Muvico posted revenues of $130 million last year. And with plans to add three or four theaters a year, he predicts revenue growth of 30% to 40% annually. Concessions, which typically make up 25% of exhibitors' sales, add up to 33% of sales at Muvico; the Palace restaurant alone grosses $4 million a year. Of course, costs are higher too for the exhibitor and moviegoers, who are charged up to double the average ticket price for the experience.

Still, they come. "The idea is to make the theater itself a destination," says Redstone, president of National Amusements, an 86-theater chain that also controls Viacom. Redstone, 51, was named vice chairman of Viacom in July but still spends 60% of her time running the privately held cinema business. "It's my love," she says. Redstone takes particular pride in the growing number of screens being relaunched under Cinema de Lux, which was based on a Los Angeles prototype called the Bridges. At the sleek, modern cinema, couples cozy up around lamplit tables in the hip Lounge 12 bar, sipping themed cocktails tied to current movies. Seats in the VIP Directors' Halls, $15 on weekends, are leather. In one auditorium, a comedian warms up the crowd and gives away movie T shirts.

For moviemakers, the luxury trend is nothing less than a godsend. "I don't want to be sacrilegious, but theaters are like churches," says Craig Brewer, writer and director of Hustle & Flow. The ramped-up sound systems and huge screens of a great theater convey the experience in ways a home theater can't. "When this beat hits, I want it to feel like when Indiana Jones is punching somebody," he says. Brewer, a Memphis, Tenn., resident who set and shot his film there, held the premiere in his hometown Muvico--a risk he says he probably wouldn't have taken with a lesser theater.

That's the kind of stardust developers are betting on. Among the six projects on Muvico's drawing board is a theater in Xanadu, an enormous New Jersey mall complex. Designed as the largest movie-theater complex in the U.S., it will feature 26 screens and a helipad to fly in celebrities from nearby New York City for premieres. "We're a starstruck nation," says Larry Siegel, CEO of developer Mills Corp. For most of us, these posh new cinemas may be the closest we'll get to being treated like one. --With reporting by Desa Philadelphia/Los Angeles