Cinema City Brand Guidelines: From a Haifa Cinema to Central Europe’s Multiplexes

A family cinema business that went east.

Cinema City grew out of a family cinema business in Haifa. The Israeli business paper Globes reported in January 2014 that the Greidinger family opened its first cinema in 1929; English Wikipedia says Moshe Greidinger, grandfather of the later chief executive of the same name, began building his first cinema in 1929 and opened it in 1931 as the Ein Dor. In 1935 he opened a second Haifa cinema, the Armon, an Art Deco building with 1,800 seats that was also used for concerts and opera.

The family moved into Tel Aviv in 1958 by acquiring the Chen cinema on Dizengoff Square, entered film distribution in 1967 by buying Forum Film, and in 1982 turned the Chen into what English Wikipedia calls the first multiplex in Israel. In Israel the business later traded under the Rav-Chen and Planet names rather than as Cinema City.

The European expansion began in 1997, when Cinema City International N.V. was set up and opened its first cinema in Budapest. By 2005, English Wikipedia says, it was the largest multiplex operator in Hungary; in 2008 it opened the Arena Plaza multiplex in Budapest, which Hungarian Wikipedia calls the country’s largest cinema complex, and in 2011 it bought the Hungarian Palace Cinemas network, adding five Budapest multiplexes and two in other cities. In 1999, English Wikipedia says, it bought the only multiplex then operating in Prague, and went on to open cinemas in Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia. In December 2006 Cinema City International listed its shares on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

Poland, IMAX and 4DX.

Poland became the chain’s biggest market by screens, according to Globes. Polish Wikipedia says the company has operated there since 1999 as Cinema City Poland, and that its first cinema, Cinema City Sadyba in Warsaw, opened on 7 September 2000 with the first IMAX screen in Poland. In 2002 it took over the Polish cinemas of Ster Century, which was leaving the market, including multiplexes in Warsaw, at Janki outside the city and in Wrocław; in 2003 it took over the Krewetka multiplex in Gdańsk from Superkino, and in January 2007 it bought Kinepolis Poznań together with the company that ran it. When the Cineworld deal was announced, Globes reported that Poland held a third of Cinema City’s screens, against 18% in Hungary and 15% in Romania.

Formats have been a large part of how the chain presents itself. On 21 May 2013 Cinema City opened its first 4DX auditorium in Poland, at Arkadia in Warsaw, which Polish Wikipedia calls the second in Europe and third in the world; in September 2017 it opened its first auditorium in Poland with Dolby Atmos sound, and in September 2025 it fitted a new reclining seat, under the Komfort name, at its Poznań cinema. Its national websites, consulted in November 2026, show the same mix: the Hungarian site headlines premium experiences in IMAX, ScreenX, 4DX and VIP, the Czech site promotes Barco laser projection, VIP auditoriums and membership of the Cinema City CLUB, and the Bulgarian site offers an Unlimited subscription login.

Not every venue lasted. Polish Wikipedia says the Gdańsk Krewetka cinema closed on 21 August 2018 after the company could not agree terms with the building’s owner, and the Kraków Plaza cinema closed in June 2021.

Cinema chains and their identities.

This group of guides looks at cinema chains in France, Central and Eastern Europe, Germany, Finland, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, the United Kingdom and Australia, and at how each presents itself: the name over the entrance, the signs, logos and colour schemes the companies publish, and the way that name carries over to tickets, websites and apps. The palettes shown here are our own interpretations, not official colour values.

Formats are part of that presentation. Some operators label their auditoriums with the premium and large-format systems they install, such as IMAX, 4DX, ScreenX or Dolby Atmos sound, and with their own names for reclining seats or VIP rooms, as Cinema City’s national websites do. City-centre multiplexes carry house labels too: UGC has grouped its large multiplexes under the Ciné Cité name since 1995.

Ownership varies. Some chains belong to larger cinema groups, as Cinema City has belonged to Cineworld since 2014; others sit inside film and media companies, as with UGC, which also produces and distributes films and series and in which Canal+ says it took a 34% stake in November 2025. Restructurings and sales are part of the record, and corporate pages on founders and owners are where each company tells its own version.

Loyalty cards and subscription passes have become part of the brand as well. UGC launched its UGC Illimité card in France in 2000, and other operators followed with passes and clubs under their own names. This guide sets out what can be checked about each chain: who founded it, who owns it now and how it names its cinemas and cards, and it marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Part of Cineworld since 2014.

In January 2014 the British exhibitor Cineworld agreed to combine with Cinema City’s cinema business. Globes reported on 12 January 2014 that Cineworld was taking full ownership of the operating company, Cinema City Holding BV, paid partly in cash and partly in new shares, so that the Greidinger family’s company would hold 24.9% of the enlarged group. The family controlled 54% of Cinema City International through its holding company, Israel Theaters, Globes said. Moshe Greidinger was to become chief executive of the combined company, which kept the Cineworld name, and Israel Greidinger its chief operating officer. The real-estate assets stayed outside the deal, and the listed company was to continue in Warsaw under a new name, Global City. According to Globes, the merged group would be Europe’s second-largest multiplex operator, with 201 multiplexes and 1,852 screens.

Cineworld grew again in 2018 by buying the American chain Regal, Polish Wikipedia says, and its debts later forced a restructuring. The group filed for US Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in early September 2022; on 1 August 2023 the Irish broadcaster RTÉ reported that it had emerged after nearly 11 months with lower debt, new equity, a new chairman, Eric Foss, and a new chief executive, Eduardo Acuna, still owning brands including Regal, Cinema City, Picturehouse and Planet. English Wikipedia, in a June 2026 revision, describes Cinema City as a Rotterdam-based operator with 99 multiplexes and 966 screens under the Cinema City banner in Central and Eastern Europe and the Planet and Rav-Chen names in Israel, with the distributor Forum Film and the advertising sales house New Age Media as subsidiaries.

For a design guide, Cinema City shows how one name can work across several languages and markets, with formats such as IMAX and 4DX carrying the message on each national site. Compare Cineworld, its parent since 2014, and Multikino, another multiplex chain in Poland. For this guide we use a deep teal, a night blue and a marquee amber with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Cinema City’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.