Exhibs, majors near d-cinema deal

September 29, 2008 A consortium of the nation's top movie-theater chains will announce within two weeks a $1 billion-plus financing agreement with four major studios to equip more than 15,000 screens nationwide with digital-projection systems during the next three years. Regal Cinemas, AMC Entertainment and Cinemark formed DCIP more than a year ago, but it's taken until recently to get a majority of the major studios to sign off on so-called virtual print fee agreements to fund the digital rollout. The deal means studios will pay a majority of the roughly $100,000 per system in hardware and installation costs to install d-cinema equipment in theaters operated by the biggest theater chains.

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