Comfort gains at Le Royal cinema: 180 new seats for room 2

Comfort gains are undeniable: the Le Royal cinema in Lisieux (Calvados) replaced the 180 seats in its room 2 last week. Grégoire Reynaud “thinks” that the old ones “dated back to the early 80s.”

In 2018, “we had done €30,000 worth of work on the seats of both cinemas (Le Royal and Le Majestic, editor’s note) to raise them, remake parts, etc., says the operator. In fact, this was not the right solution, since shortly thereafter, we were back in a situation where we had to intervene on the same seats.”

“After 10 years of waiting”

The Reynaud family had long postponed these works, which would have been unnecessary with the long-awaited construction of the new multiplex cinema. But it still hasn’t materialized, and “after more than 10 years of hoping, waiting, and at the same time receiving justified complaints from customers about the condition of the seats in some rooms,” they had to address the issue.

“We were torn, because buying new seats to put in a cinema that no longer meets the size standards of a modern cinema meant that we couldn’t reuse them in a future room.”

Finally, a great opportunity arose: “Our partner Noe Cinemas was renovating one of its cinemas and had a number of seats equivalent to what we needed. The planets were aligned,” rejoices Grégoire Reynaud. This allowed us to get them at an unbeatable price. We changed all the seats in the room for about €30,000, including installation. For 180 seats, it’s a price that you can’t find elsewhere.”

The end of leaks

A week earlier, it was the screen of room 1 that was replaced. “Due to past water infiltration problems, we had significant damage to [the old one], which was also very old,” explains the manager of the Royal. The main purpose of a cinema screen is to reflect light. It can do it because it’s white. As the screen becomes less white, it absorbs light. So, it had reached a point where it was literally eating light…”

The Reynauds invested €10,000:

“We made this change both because it was time to do it, and because we were assured that the roof repair works were finished. Infiltration problems were causing a stream of water to flow on the screen, it was catastrophic.”

Since the closure of the Majestic in 2023, the owners of Le Royal have invested around €60,000 to solve this problem and redo a new roof, “which ensures us that it won’t rain in the cinema.”

Expenses that accumulate, and that Grégoire Reynaud hopes not to have to deal with in the near future. With his partners, they responded to the call for proposals launched by the City, which will choose who will build the future cinema, and are keeping their fingers crossed that their application will be selected.

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