Screens at the Continent
6360 Busch Boulevard,
Columbus,
OH
43329
6360 Busch Boulevard,
Columbus,
OH
43329
1 person
favorited this theater
Loews Continent 9 Theatres closed on July 1, 1999. The Continent one of the first movie theaters in Columbus to offer more than two screens under one roof.
A pair of Atlanta movie-theater operators who grew up in Upper Arlington reopened Continent as an eight-screen cinema-restaurant called Cinema Grill at Continent 8 on April 7th 2004.
Cinema Grill at Continent 8 was not even open and plans were the works for a second location Cinema Grill at Consumer Square 14, that being a closed Regal Theatre.
After only 5 weeks the Cinema Grill at Continent closed on May 14, 2004. The Screens at the Continent as it is called now is operated by Realty Finance Management a subsidiary of Apollo Management LP
Contributed by
cinema1plus4
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Recent comments (view all 19 comments)
Is this theatre still open? The web site no longer exists.
www.thescreensatthecontinent.com
is the current link to the theater.
CORRECTION…. screens8.net is the correct site, the other one will eventually link you there.
Chuck
Back in the late 70’s and 80’s, there wasn’t even a glass wall for the booth area…4 of the projectors sat open in the lobby, where they picked up lots of dirt and smoke (smoking was legal in lobbies then). Those 4 rooms had some of the dirtiest prints imaginable. Also there was an open area between each pair of the original rooms, so bleed through from the next room was very bad….AND, the image was projected from the rear corner of the room, so the image was always somewhat out of focus.
In any event, this theatre played almost every available 70mm film, including Alien, The Rose, 2010, The Mission and many more. Remarkably, it did not play 70mm RETURN OF THE JEDI…no theatre in Columbus did.
It also played DAMNATION ALLEY in SOUND 360, which placed speakers on the side and back walls of the theatre. This was before the general release of STAR WARS and Dolby Stereo.
They always had the best movies and they always looked really bad. But, I saw a LOT of films there.
I must correct the above statement. DAMNATION ALLEY came out AFTER Star Wars was released. Apologies for my mistake.
The web site given above does not work. Should be http://www.screens8.net/ instead.
Same ugly page design as the newly reopened Cinema City 8 on the Far East Side. (thanks to Mark_L for noticing this)
The projectors of four of the screens sat on elevated platforms in the lobby. The film projected thru a small port windows which crossed over a common hallway entrance to the auditoriums. There were pedestals by each projector which were designed to emmulate the control panel on the starship “Enterprise”. They were just for show and served no usable function. The pictures were projected onto painted drywall. The sound system and speakers were usually consumer speakers mounted on the walls below the image.
You are writing this in the past tense. Is the theatre no longer open?
Ron, Screens at the Continent is still open.
At least the original 4 rooms did have center channel speakers behind the screen. If you drive behind the theatre, you can see the speaker boxes sticking out of the back wall.
The second theatre from the right was equipped for 3-D and magnetic sound. The third theatre from the right had 35mm magnetic sound and was later equipped for 70mm.
Here are the screen counts for each theater Screen 1 Can Seat up to 238, Enjoy the Digital Sound Screen 2 Can Seat up to 252, Enjoy the Digital Sound Screen 3 Can Seat up to 406, Enjoy the DTS Sound Screen 4 Can Seat up to 154, Enjoy the Digital Sound Screen 5 Can Seat up to 154, Enjoy the Digital Sound Screen 6 Can Seat up to 64, Enjoy the Digital Sound Screen 7 Can Seat up to 165, Enjoy the Digital Sound Screen 8 Can Seat up to 187, Enjoy the DTS Sound