Boxoffice - April 2019

CINEMACON 2019
NATO MARQUEE AWARD
With 154 screens in 11 locations, Grand Rapids, Michigan-based
Celebration! Cinema may be modest in size, but
its leader, John D. Loeks, has had a huge influence on today’s
movie exhibition arena. During his two-year tenure (2015–17)
as chairman of the National Association of Theatre Owners,
Loeks was a driving force in the creation of the Global Cinema
Federation, the first international body representing the
interests of cinemas around the world. No wonder NATO is
honoring Loeks with its annual Marquee Award for dedication
to the business at CinemaCon’s “State of the Industry” presentation
on April 2.
JOHN D. LOEKS
A REASON TO CELEBRATE
BY KEVIN LALLY
>> “John Loeks’s role in the exhibition industry defines leadership,” says
NATO President and CEO John Fithian. “This humble gentleman from
Michigan had the vision to create the Global Cinema Federation and
unite exhibitors around the world, while never forgetting the role of the
independent theater operators.”
So how did an exhibitor whose theaters are confined to one state come
to think globally? “There are two things on my mind all of the time,”
Loeks confides. “One is local and the other is global. On the local side,
you’ve heard it said that all politics is local. Well, I think there’s a corollary
in our business, that all exhibition is local. If customers don’t leave satisfied
with our theaters, our projection, our sound, our safety, our cleanliness
and yearn to come back, the motion picture exhibition business fails. And
that’s true for everybody—for me and for all my competitors. It’s just very
important to focus on the individual customer. And that’s a local thing.
“The second point is, if exhibition is to remain healthy, it needs
everybody to recognize that the theatrical experience is important. And
what I came to realize is that some of the best theaters in the world were
being built internationally in Europe and Israel and China and Australia.
I thought to myself: If we are to remain a healthy industry, we want to see
those theaters build a theatrical experience worldwide, and we need to collaborate
a bit and compare notes and help understand what we’re all doing
so we can all improve ourselves as we see what’s happening internationally.
And to do that, I thought we needed a Global Cinema Federation.
“Still, the local focus is very important for us. We are a regional chain,
but that’s not just us. Even the national chains have to figure out a way to
remain local and serve customers well and serve their communities well,
individual communities. And at the same time, we want to see the theatrical
experience survive and thrive and remain healthy and become a global
industry that is recognized as the first and best place for a distributor to
put its movies. That’s what my thinking was.” (continued on page 124)
122 APRIL 2019