Cinedom

The logo of the Cinedom

The Cinedom during the day

The Cinedom is a multiplex cinema in Cologne , which opened in December 1991 with a large media presence as the first building in the Mediapark . It offers 3748 seats in 14 halls, each equipped with up to 64 loudspeakers, making it the fifth largest German cinema of its kind.

history

Film producer Bernd Eichinger acquired the property in 1988 through the project company Constantin Kino Cinedom GmbH and was also present at the laying of the foundation stone on December 2, 1988. The construction costs were 100 million DM . The cinema was handed over on December 20, 1991.

In the early days, the Cinedom also had its own event hall called the “Black Box”. This was later converted into a cinema. In the beginning there was a billiards and snooker center directly under the black box, which was later converted into a restaurant.

Due to the insolvency of the main shareholder, the Kirch Group , its insolvency administrator sold 53.5% of the share capital of the cinema operating company to co-partner Bernd Eichinger and Cinedom managing director Thomas Peter Friedl , who thus became sole owners. In addition to the share in the operating company, the shares in the property were also sold.

At the beginning of 2012, the Cinedom Kinobetriebe GmbH entered into a cooperation with Cinemaxx AG ; Since then, it has taken on the areas of film purchasing and scheduling and off-screen marketing, including providing the reservation system and hotline.

Tom Cruise , Harrison Ford , Britney Spears , Angelina Jolie , Michael Douglas , Brad Pitt , Hugh Grant , Liam Neeson , Patrick Stewart and Jackie Chan have premiered their films at the Cinedom .

building

The Cinedom at night with the typical logo, as of 2009.

The centerpiece of the complex, which has a tuff facade, is the fully glazed rotunda that opens onto the central square of the Media Park and is covered by a dome at a height of over 30 meters. The 30-meter-high building has a large glass facade on its front side facing the square, which allows a view of the interior of the Cinedom at night.

The gross floor area is 26,500 m². The complex has three floors, each with a snack shop, toilets and the cinema halls. There are various hospitality businesses in the Cinedom, such as branches of Vapiano , Hans im Glück and a Ben & Jerry’s sales counter.

Interior design

Original interior design as of 2011.

The original interior design from 1991 emphasized the cinema theme with extensive measures. The dome took up the theme of romantic movie nights. For this purpose, the interior of the dome was traced in fiber optics with 3200 diodes of the northern starry sky. At the same time, two of the twelve dome segments open up a view of the Cologne sky. Occasionally an animated shooting star moved through the entire dome.

Each movie theater entrance was framed with a large movie star movie theater wall poster. The floors were covered with carpets throughout the building, which took up the colors of the movie star Kinossal wall poster as a theme. For 14 large cinema halls with corresponding visitor movements, very wide paths were planned, which were additionally supplemented on the middle and top floor with a bridge to each cinema hall, so that an inner courtyard atmosphere is created that extends the view. The bridges in front of each cinema room gave every large film star cinema wall poster the necessary viewing distance for the viewer and the lighting made the impression of the room even more spacious. Later the 13th film star cinema halls wall plaques were replaced by enlarged sections of the original overall motif and in muted colors. The overall motif with the original colors was only attached to the black box.

The cinema entrance in the inner courtyard emphasized the topic of spontaneous cinema evenings in which a large, continuous electronic board was installed above the ten box offices, which displayed the number of available seats live.

From the second half of 2018 (during ongoing operations) extensive renovations and changes to the interior design took place. The colorful look was changed to a black ceiling and light gray for the walls, columns, floor and dome. The movie star wall posters in the cinema were painted over with wall paint and an animated purple-white pattern has been used ever since. The glass escalators with blue neon tubes were painted over in gold and should shine in warm gold tones. The wall to the black box received wooden decorative strips. The cash registers moved in the area behind the escalators due to the increased sale of tickets via the Internet or terminals in self-service. The display board for the current movies has been dismantled. Gastronomy moved into the vacated space in the cinema entrance courtyard area. The starry sky in the dome was partially no longer functional, a renewal was uneconomical, so that this was also replaced by a light gray ceiling with animated patterns. The multi-million dollar conversion phase ended in October 2019.

technology

The following table shows the technical data of the individual halls of the Cinedom: A total of eight halls are equipped with Dolby 3D .

Kino 4 was the first German cinema to switch to laser projection in autumn 2015: Barco DLP4k-60L. Furthermore, Dolby Atmos was retrofitted.

movie theater	Places	Canvas size	Sound systems	speaker	Film formats
1	298	6.9 m × 15.9 m = 109 m²	Dolby Surround 7.1	32 pieces	4K / 3D
2	204	6.1 mx 13.8 m = 84.2 m²	Dolby Surround 7.1	20 piece	2K / 3D
3	172	6.1 mx 13.8 m = 84.2 m²	Dolby Surround 7.1	20 piece	4K / 3D
4th	705	9.8 m × 22.7 m = 222.5 m²	Dolby Atmos, Dolby Surround 7.1	64 pieces	4K laser / 3D
5	298	6.9 m × 15.9 m = 109 m²	Dolby Surround 7.1	32 pieces	4K / 3D
6th	204	6.1 mx 13.8 m = 84.2 m²	Dolby Surround 7.1	20 piece	2K / 3D
7th	172	6.1 mx 13.8 m = 84.2 m²	Dolby Surround 7.1	20 piece	2K / 3D
8th	113	4.5 m × 10 m = 45 m²	Dolby Surround 7.1	20 piece	4K / 3D
9	480	8.5 m × 19.7 m = 167.5 m²	Dolby Atmos, Dolby Surround 7.1	64 pieces	4K dual / 3D
10	298	6.9 m × 15.9 m = 109 m²	Dolby Surround 7.1	32 pieces	4K
11	204	6.1 mx 13.8 m = 84.2 m²	Dolby Surround 7.1	20 piece	2K
12	172	6.1 mx 13.8 m = 84.2 m²	Dolby Surround 7.1	20 piece	2K
13	113	4.5 m × 10 m = 45 m²	Dolby Surround 7.1	20 piece	2K
Black box	265	8.0 m × 13.7 m = 109.6 m²	Dolby Atmos, Dolby Surround 7.1	48 pieces	2K

Transport links

There are two train stations in the area, on the one hand the KVB stop Christophstraße / Mediapark and the train station Hansaring . There is also an underground car park under the cinema near the entrance . The site can be reached by car via the Köln-Nord junction and the A 57 .