Making It Big : Edwards’ Irvine complex will have live music, egg rolls and cappuccino bars. But will it also offer more film choices or just more of the same?

When the Edwards movie theater chain opens its Big One today, the place won’t be hurting for creature comforts.

Along with 21 screens--more than any other theater in the state--and a world -record-setting 6,444 seats spread over a world-record-setting 158,000 square feet, the $27-million complex in the Spectrum Entertainment Center will offer:

* Live music in the lobby on weekends.

* Children’s entertainment.

* A women’s restroom with more than 50 stalls.

There’ll be retro-themed interior decor with towering murals harking back to Hollywood’s golden age of movie exhibition, and lounges for lobby-sitters, cappuccino bars, even places to get egg rolls and cheesecake and baked potatoes.

But will this presumably well-served feast have a main course on the menu to satisfy patrons hungry for movies rather than dressing?

Will the Edwards 21 megaplex mean that movie lovers in Orange County no longer have to go to colleges and museums--or L.A. or San Diego--to see retrospective programs or the sorts of independent and experimental films that haven’t normally played theaters here? Or will it just mean 21 more chances to see “Get Shorty”?

John Krier, president of Exhibitor Relations, a research company in Los Angeles that tracks movie distribution, releasing patterns and box-office results nationwide, says that, by and large, moviegoers will get “more of the same pictures that they see now in a different environment and will have a wide choice.”

But chain patriarch Jim Edwards Sr. maintains that “we’ll play everything, except for X-rated, unrated and NC-17 pictures. We’ll have to play everything, just to get 21 screens filled with product.”

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The movies that launch the Big One today seem to indicate business as usual. Only one--”Carrington,” a Cannes prize winner--might be described as an art film; it will be shown on one screen, with Disney’s “Toy Story” on three and the latest Ace Ventura and James Bond sequels on two screens each.

But Edwards--who turns 89 Thursday and who has a reputation among movie-industry insiders for a steel-trap mind, technological innovation and tightfisted competition as well as conservative taste--says he thinks “people in the Orange County area are more cosmopolitan than they used to be.”

“It is surprising to me how many people are interested in intellectual films, what we used to call ‘off-the-wall’ films, films that excite the imagination, foreign-language films with subtitles,” he said during a recent interview in his spacious office above his flagship Newport Cinema in Newport Beach.

Accordingly, he said, the Big One will have two screens in medium-sized, centrally located auditoriums dedicated to art films. Moreover, in keeping with his retro-themed decor, he said he is “open to showing retro films” (Hollywood classics), and even festival packages. “We’re not going to have a specialist on the staff who goes out looking for them,” he said. “But if somebody brings an idea to us for a program, we’ll seriously consider it.”

“We are definitely going to have old movies,” said one insider, an Edwards executive who asked not to be named. Indeed, this person said, one theater even will be equipped with an organ for old-fashioned musical interludes or, depending on the program, accompaniment.

The complex is not expected to have much impact on Edwards’ ability to get whatever picture he wants from Hollywood distributors, because “you can’t get any more clout than Jimmy has now,” Krier of Exhibitor Relations said. “The way he operates, he has to be first. He has to be the biggest. He has to be the greatest. He already gets everything he wants.”

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“When you go out to a movie in Orange County, do you ever see any theaters without the Edwards name on it?” asked Rick Meyerson, executive vice president for domestic distribution at 20th Century Fox.

The Edwards chain, the largest in California and 15th-largest nationally, dominates the county with some 220 screens, contrasted with AMC’s 22, United Artists’ 20 and Landmark’s one.

Meyerson predicts that with the Big One, “Edwards will create artificial competition with himself. The average attendance per screen at his other theaters will decrease a little.”

And the Spectrum Entertainment Center, where the Big One is flanked by restaurants offering middlebrow dining, will have more impact on Edwards’ older theaters than anything else. The industry consensus is unanimous: Megascreen entertainment centers have captured the public’s fancy.

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Not unlike shopping malls, they create a metropolitan feeling in the suburbs. They get people out of their back yards and out of their cars and offer them an opportunity for social intercourse with strangers.

“The home is actually our biggest competitor,” Edwards said. “We have to give [people] something they don’t have there. They like the big screen, the big feel. They don’t like to sit in the closet to see a movie. You can do that at home.

“I used to feel sorry for everyone who stood in line to see a movie. I wished we had more seats for them. But I found that the people who stood in line got to talk to each other. They enjoyed it. It was part of the whole experience.”

And “I don’t think any movie complex in the world will top this place for the size and clarity of the picture, projection technology or overall detail of the design,” says Frank Mohamad Haffar, Edwards’ chief administrative officer and vice president.

“Nobody has built anything on this scale. There are places with more screens, but they’re all small screens. No other movie complex has as many seats or as big a footprint, architecturally. I think this place will set the trend for moviegoing.”

Apparently, even the number of screens has significance.

“There are 21 screens for the 21st Century,” said Larry Porricelli, the Big One’s general manager.

“Mr. Edwards did that on purpose.”

Times staff writer Zan Dubin contributed to this report.