Santikos Theaters will expand from 121 screens in San Antonio and New Braunfels to 377 screens in seven states across the Southeast with the purchase of 17 new theaters, the company announced Thursday.
The theater chain founded in San Antonio in 1911 will acquire The Grand Theatres and AmStar Cinemas from New Orleans-based VSS-Southern Theatres LLC, making Santikos the eighth largest theater chain in North America.
The purchase will give Santikos theaters in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina along with Texas. It is Santikos’ first major acquisition and has been in the works since 2018.
“And we may not be done,” said Santikos CEO Tim Handren, who was in New Orleans Thursday meeting with the leadership team of AmStar Cinemas and Grand Theatres.
Handren said the Southern Theatres were attractive because they were similar to Santikos theaters in their attendance numbers, and were already upgraded with reclining seats. The new theaters will not be rebranded.
Santikos has returned to pre-pandemic visitor numbers, Handren said, and said those figures are outpacing the country as whole. He attributed that to Santikos delivering “a great experience,” but credited San Antonio with being a town full of movie lovers.
“And people know we operate for the benefit of the community,” he said.
Since 2014, when then-CEO John Santikos died and directed that profits from the company’s theaters and real estate holdings go to charity, more than $80 million has been distributed back to the community, according to a company spokesman.
Distributions from the San Antonio Area Foundation, which oversees the John L. Santikos Charitable Foundation, led to a hiatus in most grant distributions in 2021 as box office revenues plunged.
Both boards — Santikos Enterprises, the holding company for Santikos Theaters and its real estate holdings, and the San Antonio Area Foundation — “are very much aligned” with the expansion of the theater company, Handren said.
