AMC Is Moving Booking Office

For AMC Entertainment Inc., it’s no longer hooray for Hollywood.

AMC, the nation’s second-largest chain of movie theaters, said it was moving its film-booking office out of Los Angeles. The company said it was relocating the operation to that well-known film center: Kansas City, Mo.

The booking unit is being consolidated with other operations at AMC’s corporate headquarters in Kansas City as part of a companywide restructuring that will trim its administrative workforce by more than 50 people, said Pam Blase, a spokeswoman for the chain.

AMC has talked with the major movie studios about the relocation, Blase said, and they seem supportive of the plan to move the film-buying operation away from Hollywood.

“We don’t anticipate any change in our great relationships,” Blase said.

All but about five of the 20 Los Angeles employees are being laid off, Blase said.

AMC Film Group President Richie Fay decided not to make the move to Kansas City, and his top lieutenant, Sonny Gourley, will take over the operation. Blase said.

AMC, which went public in 1983, was bought by private investment firm Marquee Holdings Inc. last year. The transaction was valued at about $2 billion.

The chain, which has about 18,000 employees worldwide, operates 231 theaters with 3,560 screens in the U.S., Britain, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Japan, Portugal and Spain.