AMC Will Double Number of Screens at Fullerton Theater

AMC announced Tuesday that it will double the number of movie screens at its Fullerton site from 10 to 20, creating the largest movie complex in North County.

The expansion will allow the company to show the most popular movies on several screens for longer periods of time and to show independent and foreign films, said Brian Scheid, regional operations manager.

Since it opened in 1982, the complex has been one of the most successful of the company’s 227 theaters nationwide, Scheid said.

“We don’t have as many seats as we’d like,” he said. “Customers have expressed a strong desire for more screens to enable them to have more movies to choose from.”

The addition will make AMC Fullerton the second-largest theater complex in the county. The newly opened 21-screen Edwards complex in Irvine is the largest, for now. Century Theaters Inc. has plans for a 25-screen complex in Orange, but those have not been finalized.

AMC plans to break ground within the next four months for the 1,650-seat addition to AMC Fullerton, at 1001 S. Lemon St. When finished, the theater--renamed AMC Fullerton Town Center 20 Theatres--will total 75,000 square feet and have 4,300 seats. Scheid said the project will open by the summer of 1997.

The new screens will be on the south side of the theater, and a new entrance with nine ticket booths will be built. Scheid said the company plans to renovate the existing theater space as well.

To create more parking spaces, a vacant 20,000-square-foot building next to the theater will be demolished.

Officials at AMC’s headquarters in Kansas City, Mo., said that current admission costs will remain the same after the project is completed.

The Fullerton expansion will be the third for AMC, officials said. The other two are in Florida and Missouri. The company also has built five megaplex theaters in the past year, four of them in California. In two weeks, a 13-screen complex will open in Japan as that country’s largest theater.

The megaplex, Scheid said, is “what the customers want, and it’s been very successful.”

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More Screens

AMC theater to expand from 10 to 20 screens.