History
Major Cineplex was founded by Vicha Poolvaraluk (or Poolvaraluck) in 1996. A member of a family with roots in the movie business (the family was involved in film studios as well as several single-screen theaters), Vicha started out in property development.
In 1992, he was asked by his father, Charoen Poolvaraluck, to take over the movie theater business. Vicha decided on a concept of large movie complexes that could offer a range of entertainment services, including not only movies, but also bowling alleys, karaoke rooms, restaurants and shopping. The first such complex opened in 1996 on Nakhon Chaisri Road in Pinklao, Bangkok. The 14-screen, 4,000-seat Major Cineplex Ratchayothin opened in 1998 and featured Thailand's first IMAX cinema. It was the company's flagship cinema complex until 2006, when Paragon Cineplex opened. Other early Major Cineplex theaters include branches at Ramkamheang and Sukhumvit.
In 2004, Major Cineplex absorbed Thailand's No 2 theater operator, EGV Entertainment, which was Thailand's first cineplex operator. EGV had been owned by a rival branch of the Poolvaraluck family, headed by Vicha Poolvaraluck's cousin, Wichai Poolvaraluck, who started EGV as a partnership with Golden Village.
Read more about this topic: Major Cineplex
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“There are two great unknown forces to-day, electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity than they can on woman.”
—Josephine K. Henry, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 15, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)