Filmstaden Brand Guidelines: SF Bio’s 2018 Rename, a Råsunda Studio Name and AMC

A studio name on a cinema chain.

Filmstaden is the Swedish cinema chain that traded for two decades as SF Bio. Swedish Wikipedia says the company was formed in 1998, when the media group Bonnier, which had bought Svensk Filmindustri in 1983, split it into two businesses: SF Bio AB for the cinemas and Svensk Filmindustri AB for film production. The production side is now called SF Studios and is still owned by Bonnier, the cinema company said in November 2017.

The roots are older than the company. In that November 2017 statement, the company said the familiar SF ring had stood for both film production and cinema-going for nearly a hundred years, and it called 2019 its jubilee year. The name Filmstaden — “the film city” — comes from SF’s old studio at Råsunda, in Solna, just north of Stockholm. English Wikipedia says the studio was built in 1919–1920 to designs by the architect Ebbe Crone, that the first film made there was Victor Sjöström’s The Phantom Carriage of 1921, and that SF left the site in 1969. Swedish Wikipedia counts about 440 SF films recorded there up to 1970; a cinema called Filmstaden Råsunda now stands on the site.

The name moved from studio to cinema in 1980. Swedish Wikipedia says the first cinema called Filmstaden opened in central Stockholm on 15 February 1980, with eleven auditoriums on two floors, as SF’s answer to a rival multi-screen cinema, Rigoletto, on Kungsgatan. It was replaced in 1995 by Filmstaden Sergel, with 14 screens, and SF went on to renew almost its whole network with multi-screen cinemas under the Filmstaden name.

It also grew by taking over rivals. In 2007, Swedish Wikipedia says, it took over the provincial cinemas of Astoria Cinemas, which was in financial difficulty, closing most of them at once, and later that year it took over the Biopalatsen cinemas in Stockholm and Gothenburg.

Ratos, Bridgepoint, AMC.

Ownership changed three times in four years. Swedish Wikipedia says Bonnier sold 60 per cent of the cinema business in March 2013 to the investment company Ratos, a former owner of the Finnish chain Finnkino, creating Nordic Cinema Group. In 2015 Ratos sold its stake, and Bonnier part of its own, to the private-equity firm Bridgepoint.

In January 2017 Variety reported that AMC, the American cinema chain then controlled by China’s Dalian Wanda group, had agreed to buy Nordic Cinema Group from Bridgepoint and Bonnier Holding, subject to European Union approval. Variety described Nordic as the largest cinema operator in seven countries in the Nordic and Baltic regions, with 68 theatres and 463 screens, and said AMC planned to run it together with Odeon, the European chain it had bought the year before. By November 2017 SF Bio said it was wholly owned by Odeon Cinemas Group, part of AMC; Swedish Wikipedia also gives 2017 as the year AMC bought the whole group.

That sale explains the rename. On 30 November 2017 SF Bio announced that during the following year the company would change its name from SF Bio AB to Filmstaden AB and replace the SF logo with a Filmstaden mark, symbolised by an “F” instead of “SF.” Swedish Wikipedia gives the reason: the former owner Bonnier still owned the SF name. The company noted that its cinemas in every town already traded as Filmstaden, and that some cinemas with names of their own, such as Rigoletto and Royal, would keep them.

The change was made in autumn 2018. Swedish Wikipedia says the re-signing began on 26 October 2018 with the opening of Filmstaden Helsingborg. In its 2017 statement the company gave its size as 38 cinemas with 264 auditoriums in 22 towns; in a June 2024 statement it gave 35 cinemas with 254 auditoriums in 16 towns.

How cinema chains present themselves.

Cinema chains sell an evening out more than a product, so their own pictures do much of the work. The pictures a chain publishes are mostly of its rooms: auditoriums with rows of seats facing the screen, and foyers, concession counters and bars. In 2025 the Milwaukee station FOX6 filmed the lobby of the Marcus Majestic in Waukesha, Wisconsin, whose manager described the aim as to “wow and dazzle” guests.

Screen formats have become brands of their own. Chains name their large-format rooms, their recliner rooms and their dine-in rooms, and carry outside names such as IMAX, Dolby Atmos sound and moving-seat 4D. Spanish Wikipedia lists a family of Cinemex room names, from CinemeXtremo for its large-format screens to Platino for recliners with seat service; in February 2026, Deadline reported, Marcus Theatres told analysts that a growing share of its sales came from premium large-format and 3D showings.

The booking app and the loyalty card are now part of the identity too. Chains run points schemes, tiered memberships and subscription-style clubs. When Cinemex changed its logo in December 2024, its chief executive said the app and website would change with it, Merca 2.0 reported; Marcus Theatres told analysts in 2026 that it was concentrating on a dine-in app, loyalty programmes and a movie club, according to Deadline.

Behind the consumer brand there is usually a corporate one: a listed parent, a family holding company or a private-equity owner, with its own pages on ownership, sites and screen counts. This guide sets out what can be checked about each chain — who founded it, who owns it and how large it is, as dated sources give it — and treats claims about comfort or scale as the companies’ own.

A new mark and a new sound.

The rename also changed how Filmstaden sounds. In August 2018 SF Bio said its classic sound ident, composed by Jules Sylvain in 1943, had introduced screenings for 75 years and was to be replaced. It invited the public to vote between three new idents by the composer Jakob Oldenburg, recorded live in a studio with a string orchestra, and said the winning ident would be joined to a new visual ident. Swedish Wikipedia says the vote ran through the company’s Biolabbet service in September 2018. That month the trade magazine Resumé published a podcast in which the marketing chiefs of SF Bio and SF Media discussed the change of visual and audio identity.

Its premium formats carry other names. In June 2024 Filmstaden described Uppsala as an important market with demand for comfort and premium formats, naming IMAX and iSense, when it announced Filmstaden LUXE Uppsala and closed its Royal and Spegeln cinemas in the city on 3 June. Swedish Wikipedia adds that Filmstaden owns 49 per cent of Svenska Bio, another Swedish cinema chain, and runs the booking website used by its own cinemas, by Svenska Bio and by Cinemascenen.

For a design guide, Filmstaden shows how a chain can keep a heritage name while giving up the mark that came with it: the studio name stayed, and the SF ring went to the former owner. Compare Odeon, its sister chain in AMC’s European group, and AMC Theatres, the American owner. For this guide we use a curtain red, an ink blue and a warm cream with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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