Multiscreen Movie Theaters Urged for Japan : Entertainment: The multiplexes may be the way to arrest the country’s declining film viewership, Hollywood executives say.

Senior executives of some of America’s biggest film distributors took time off from a recent Tokyo International Film Festival to give Japan a little free advice on how to revive its ailing theater business.

Their solution? Multiscreen cinemas.

“It’s time multiplexes are built in Japan,” Jack Gordon, president of international distribution at MGM/United Artists, told several hundred Japanese developers, movie distributors and financiers at a symposium sponsored in part by Japanese financiers. “It will make a vast difference to the theater business.”

Underlying the Americans’ advice, of course, is the hope that the difference will mean more money flowing back to Hollywood.

Japan is Hollywood’s largest overseas market, but American films have a smaller percentage of the market than in other nations. Moreover, Japan is a declining market. Cinema attendance has been falling for decades--to the current average of about 1.15 films per person a year. The average American sees almost five movies a year.

Part of the problem is too few theaters in Japan--one-sixth the number per capita as in the United States.

Multiplex theaters have helped revive film attendance elsewhere, Gordon said. For example, theater attendance was falling fast in Britain in the 1980s until multiplex theaters arrived.

Multiplex created similar turnarounds in Australia and Germany, according to Mark Zoradi, president of Buena Vista International Distribution.

In each case, the revival in theater sales has boosted Hollywood’s overseas profits. Wayne Duband, president of Warner Bros. International Theatrical Distribution, estimated that American film earnings from international theater business climbed to 19.3% of total sales in 1991 from 15.4% in 1986. He expects the share to rise to 19.3% by the year 2000.

Duband said he sees the greatest growth potential in Japan.

So far, Warner Bros. is the only U.S. company to put its money where its mouth is. Next April, a joint venture between Warner and Japanese developer Nichii Co. will open its first multiplex theater--a seven-screen cinema in a Tokyo suburb. The company has already broken ground on one eight-screen and one six-screen cinema and hopes to complete 30 to 35 multiplexes by the end of the decade.

“They (Japanese) love American movies so much, I am totally confident the experiment will be successful,” said Salah M. Hassanein, who represented the joint venture company, Warner Mycal Corp.

Warner Mycal’s multiplex theaters will have digital sound and specially designed seats imported from Spain--an improvement over most Japanese theaters, Hassanein said.

Paul F. Hussy, senior associate at the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, which helped sponsor the symposium, said his bank sees a big future in multiplex developments. It is aware of at least one more joint venture now being negotiated, he said. Industry insiders speculate that AMC, America’s largest builder of multiplex theaters, may soon establish a joint venture in Japan.

Foreign film distributors hope that independent multiplex theaters will help break monopolistic practices under which most Japanese theaters are locked into showing films chosen by two major Japanese film distributors.

“They would play not just movies showing on Shochiku or Toho theater circuits but play all movies from all distributors,” said Gordon. “There will be more business for everyone.”