page_title: Cinemark Theatres
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Cinemark Theatres / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Cinemark Theatres Rockwall, TX
context_page_description: Cinemark Holdings, Inc. is an American movie theater chain that started operations in 1984 as Cinemark USA, Inc. and since then it operates theaters with hundreds of throughout the Americas and in Taiwan. It is headquartered in Plano, Texas, in the Dallas–Fort Worth area. It is the largest movie theatre chain in Brazil, with a 30 percent market share.
  Cinemark operates theaters under several brands, including its flagship Cinemark, Century Theatres, Tinseltown, CinéArts, and Rave Cinemas.
context_section_description: Cinemark was started by Lee Roy Mitchell as a chain of theatres in California, Texas, and Utah. It is unclear when Cinemark was first founded. While Cinemark officially claims to have launched in 1984 (and previously claimed a 1983 founding date), online records show Cinemark might have started as early as 1977. The roots of the company date back to the 1960s when brothers J.C. and Lee Roy Mitchell created Mitchell Theatres, Inc. By 1972, the company was named Texas Cinema Corporation. Lee Roy Mitchell then formed a group of theaters under the Cinemark name beginning in 1977. Cinemark Corporation and Texas Cinema Corporation merged operations in June 1979 creating a portfolio of 25 theaters in Texas and New Mexico under the Cinemark brand.
  With the opening of the Movies 8 on 3912 Hampton Road in Texarkana, Texas in 1987, Cinemark began building theaters with colorful interiors and large video game arcades. The following year, Cinemark introduced its Front Row Joe mascot. This animated cat appeared in policy trailers and on kids' concession products. The mascot was retired in 1998 when Cinemark had begun to open Art Deco-style theatres, and was revived in 2002. In 1992, Cinemark opened a new theater concept called Hollywood USA in Garland, Texas; this concept was subsequently refined into the Tinseltown USA brand of theaters, which were much bigger than what Cinemark had previously built. The following year, Cinemark expanded to Latin America with the opening of a theater in Santiago, Chile. The next year, Cinemark opened four theaters in Mexico. In 1998, Cinemark announced that it would replace its bright color interiors with what Cinemark characterized as a more classic Art Deco design. Through new theatre construction and acquisitions, it became the third largest theatre chain in the United States and the second largest theatre chain in the world. Mitchell's son Kevin Mitchell worked with the company as an executive until leaving in 2007 to found ShowBiz Cinemas. In 2013, Cinemark decided to sell all of its Mexican theaters to Cinemex.
caption: Cinemark Theatres in Rockwall, Texas.
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