Cinema Ikspiari

When the plan of the Ikspiari Mall in the heart of Tokyo Disney Resort was first drawn up, the staff at Disney had hoped to develop the facility under the Disney brand, but due to OLC’s policy, Disney agreed to operate the facility without the Disney brand. For this reason, Ikspiari is a “non-Disney area” in that, as a rule, no Disney characters appear within the facility and cast members (employees) are prohibited from wearing Disney-related character goods or accessories from the facility. But however, this does not apply to the Disney Store Tokyo Disney Resort and the AMC Ikspiari 16.

The AMC Ikspiari 16 opened its doors on July 8, 2000 with 16 screens and 3,504 seats in total as AMC’s last movie theater to open in Japan, which was due to the AMC chain intensifying competition in the United States, which AMC had no choice but began to curtail its investments abroad around its opening year and had to focus on domestic investments. Since AMC had no affiliation with domestic capital, which other plans to open three other theaters in Japan were withdrawn, and no new theaters were opened after the Ikspiari. This opened one day after the actual mall opened and was located just blocks away from Tokyo Disneyland.

Unfortunately in 2005, the Japanese market was deemed to be inefficient for investment, and the company began to withdraw. The Ikspiari 16 was immediately transferred from AMC Japan to the AMC Entertainment International (AMCEI), which the site itself was put on hold due to a dispute between AMC Japan and Oriental Land over high rent. On July 1 of the same year, the Ikspiari became the only AMC theater in Japan to not be affected with its move to United Cinemas after the four other AMC theaters in Japan were sold to United Cinemas for 5 billion yen, which is $33,319,450 in United States money. Instead, the remaining Ikspiari 16 was transferred over to Oriental Land on September 1 of the same year for 1 billion yen, or $6,663,890 in United States money.

The aforementioned dispute was also resolved at the same time. Oriental Land outsourced operations to its wholly owned subsidiary in which all theater employees and three former AMC Japan headquarters staff members were transferred out of AMCEI. As a condition of the transfer, AMC required the site to be renamed within eight months, so the site was renamed Cinema Ikspiari on March 1, 2006. AMCEI’s Japan branch was closed at the end of October 2005, completing the company’s withdrawal.

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