Virgin Cinemas was founded in 1995 when

Richard Branson Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is a British billionaire, entrepreneur, and business magnate. In the 1970s he founded the Virgin Group, which today controls more than 400 companies in various fields. Branson expressed ...

Virgin Group Virgin Group Ltd. is a British multinational venture capital conglomerate founded by Richard Branson and Nik Powell in February 1970. Virgin Group's date of incorporation is listed as 1989 by the Companies House, who class it as a holding c ...

acquired MGM Cinemas, the largest movie theatre operator in the United Kingdom.

bought the cinemas for £195m, and subsequently sold 90 of the chain's smallest cinemas to

Cinven Cinven is a global private equity firm founded in 1977, with offices in nine international locations in Guernsey, London, New York, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, Luxembourg, Madrid, and Hong Kong that acquires Europe and United States based corporat ...

and ABC for £70m to concentrate on multiplexes. In late 1999 Virgin announced that it would sell its cinema interests in Britain and Ireland to UGC, in which French entertainment and utilities giant

Vivendi Vivendi SE is a French mass media holding company headquartered in Paris. Widely known as the owner of Gameloft, Groupe Canal+, Havas, Editis, Prisma Media, Vivendi Village and Dailymotion, the company has activities in television, film, video ...

has a 38% controlling share.
/ref> Virgin sold the chain for £215m, making them a profit of £90m, and all the cinemas were to be rebranded to UGC. The company did strike a long-term deal, however, for UGC to continue to sell

Virgin Cola Virgin Cola was a carbonated cola soft drink, launched in 1994. History Virgin Cola was set up during the early 1990s in conjunction with Cott, an American-Canadian company that specialises in bottling own-label drinks. Cott was looking for ...

. The group continued to operate a Virgin Cinemas Japan unit, and announced, also in late 1999, that it would spend up to US$200 million to develop 20 multiplexes in Japan by the early 21st century; a number of Virgin multiplexes in the United States were also under consideration. Despite this, the company closed down in late 2002 as it was sold to

Toho is a Japanese film, theatre production and distribution company. It has its headquarters in Chiyoda, Tokyo, and is one of the core companies of the Osaka-based Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group. Outside of Japan, it is best known as the producer an ...

, forming

Toho Cinemas is a Japanese movie theater company. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toho, Toho Co., Ltd. Overview Virgin Cinemas Japan Ltd. was founded by Japanese-American businessman Mark Yamamoto on September 12, 1997. Virgin Cinemas Trias Hisayama, ...

References

https://scholarsmantra.in/ Former cinema chains in the United Kingdom Former cinema chains in the Republic of Ireland Entertainment companies established in 1995 {{film-org-stub