SINGAPORE – Singapore-listed mm2 Asia, which operates the Cathay Cineplexes business, announced on Oct 18 that it will acquire and take over operations of WE Cinemas at 321 Clementi mall on Nov 1.
It also reached an agreement to start operating the Clementi cinema as Cathay Cineplexes Clementi 321.
The Clementi cinema was owned by EW Cinemas, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Eng Wah Global.
Mr Melvin Ang, mm2 Asia’s executive chairman, said: “The cinema… is well located in the heart of Clementi, in a well-positioned estate which serves a good spread of public and private housing estates, polytechnics and universities; and is the nearest to town (compared with) all our other cinemas operating today.”
He added that the addition demonstrates the company’s continued confidence in the cinema business and the belief that blockbusters will be back on screens soon.
“The cinema business has not fully recovered in the past three years post-Covid-19, from its mandated closures to limited capacity occupancies due to social distancing, followed by the strikes in Hollywood that resulted in a blockbuster shortage, and changing consumer habits of the audiences – the business recovery is taking longer than expected,” he acknowledged.
mm2 Asia previously announced in August 2021 that it had entered into a sale and purchase agreement with Kingsmead Properties to sell its cinema business for $84.8 million.
But the deal fell through in early 2022, amid the pandemic hitting movie theatres hard, with new variants of Covid-19 clouding the outlook for the entertainment business.
Now, the cinema business has seen a resurgence at the box office, as well as a global uptick in investments in recent months, mm2 Asia noted in its media statement.
Several notable acquisitions, joint ventures and large-scale cinema improvement plans have been announced in the
