Harkins Theatres Brand Guidelines: A 1933 Tempe Cinema, Ciné Capri and CINÉ XL

A stop in Tempe on the way to Los Angeles.

Harkins Theatres traces its start to 1933 in Tempe, Arizona. English Wikipedia says Dwight “Red” Harkins left Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1931, at the age of 16, hoping to find work in the film business in Los Angeles, and got no further than Tempe when his money ran short. In 1933 he opened the State Theatre there, in a building that had opened in 1907 as the Goodwin Opera House.

The early years were small and local. In 1934 he built an outdoor theatre in Tempe Beach Park, which lasted a single summer, and in 1940 he opened the College Theater, later renamed Harkins Valley Art, a name the chain still uses. The last cinema he opened himself, English Wikipedia says, was the Camelview 5 in Scottsdale, in 1973. That building closed in December 2015, when the company carried the name over to a 14-screen cinema, Camelview at Fashion Square, inside the Scottsdale Fashion Square mall.

From 1974 the business was run by Dan Harkins, the founder’s fourth son. English Wikipedia says the company was close to bankruptcy at that point and had trouble booking first-run films. In 1977 it sued a group of film distributors over access to those releases; after the company won, it was able to show a run of Disney’s Fantasia in May 1982, which English Wikipedia describes as the start of a string of successful releases. Under Dan Harkins the chain grew from five sites around Phoenix to cinemas in several states, and in the early 1990s it took over a number of theatres that had been operated by Mann Theatres.

Named rooms, from Ciné Capri to CINÉ XL.

Harkins is privately owned through its parent company, Harkins Enterprises, LLC. English Wikipedia gives it 35 theatres with 487 screens in Arizona, California, Colorado and Oklahoma, and describes it as the seventh-largest circuit in North America and the largest family-owned cinema chain in the United States. A cinema it ran in Southlake, Texas, closed in 2020.

Much of its identity is carried by named auditoriums. The Ciné Capri began as a single cinema in Phoenix with what English Wikipedia calls the largest screen in Arizona, more than 70 feet long. Harkins reopened it in 1988; the building was demolished in 1998, despite a preservation campaign that gathered more than 200,000 signatures. A new Ciné Capri opened in 2003 at the Scottsdale 101 multiplex, and the company built Ciné Capri auditoriums in Oklahoma City, Denver and Tempe. In 2016 it said those rooms, except Scottsdale 101, would be rethemed, and from 2018 the biggest screen at selected sites became CINÉ XL, its premium large format, formerly called CINÉ 1, with Dolby Atmos sound and 4K laser projection.

Other names sit beside it. CINÉ Grill is the dine-in concept, with a kitchen that sends food to guests in the auditorium, plus a cocktail bar, a lounge and a patio. Since December 2009 Harkins has leased the IMAX theatre at Arizona Mills, which reopened under its name with Avatar in IMAX 3D. In March 2026 it announced a 4D format with Lumma, 4D E-Motion, which pairs motion seats with scents, air, water and other effects, Arizona’s Family reported on 30 March 2026, calling it the state’s first 4D immersive moviegoing experience. The first room opened at Harkins Norterra in north Phoenix in August 2026, English Wikipedia says.

The Harkins Art Film Society brings art-house and independent films to the chain; Harkins Valley Art and Camelview at Fashion Square are given over to foreign and independent titles. Its cinemas also host festivals, including the Phoenix Film Festival at Scottsdale 101, the Scottsdale International Film Festival at Shea 14 and deadCENTER at Bricktown 16 in Oklahoma City.

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 house phrase and a family of CINÉ names.

The company’s own phrase for what it sells is “Harkins Ultimate Moviegoing.” Its chief executive used it in March 2026, when he said the new 4D rooms were “fully immersive and fun while staying true to our standards for comfort, quality presentation and storytelling,” Arizona’s Family reported. The sub-brands share a visible system: the accented CINÉ prefix runs through CINÉ XL and CINÉ Grill, and the older Ciné Capri name keeps the same French-styled word.

Its dealings with distributors still make news, as they did in the 1970s. On 9 September 2026 Arizona’s Family reported that releases from the film company A24 had disappeared from Harkins listings, while chains including AMC, Cinemark and Regal were showing them. A Harkins spokesperson told the station that “we were not able to secure mutually agreeable terms with A24 to present their films at this time,” and A24 declined to comment. On 12 October 2026 the station reported that A24 titles were appearing again on the Harkins website and app; neither company had made the terms public.

Place is the other constant. The chain grew from one Tempe theatre, still keeps a Valley Art name from 1940, and gives its multiplexes the names of their neighbourhoods and malls — Scottsdale 101, Shea 14, Tempe Marketplace 16, Bricktown 16.

For a design guide, Harkins Theatres shows how a family-founded circuit can build an identity from named rooms and a single house phrase rather than from one flagship. Compare Marcus Theatres, a Milwaukee circuit, and AMC Theatres, one of the national chains that showed A24’s films during the dispute. For this guide we use a desert brick red, sand and amber with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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