If you ever built a fort out of boxes and blankets as a kid, you’re going to be enamored by what one company is doing to reinvent the movie theater experience.
According to The Moscow Times, Russia’s Teterin Film company is set to launch a chain of low-price movie theaters.
Why the low price, you ask? It’s simple — the theaters are built entirely from cargo shipping containers.
About 100 of these unique theaters will be installed all across Russia by September of 2016. The company is aiming to place them in small cities of less than 100,000; the first building will be constructed in Lyudinovo, a tiny city in the Kaluga region southwest of Moscow.
The project is intended to support domestic cinema, offering only a limited number of foreign movies. It also aims to bring a big-screen experience to small-town people.
Building a five-screen shipping container theater will only cost the company about $295,000 USD, which is drastically less than what existing large cinema chains are spending on their buildings. Because of the low construction price, tickets will only cost between $1.50 and $2.40 USD.
As The Atlantic notes, the head honchos at Teterin Film are hardly the first people to realize the many uses for custom containers. The multi-purpose containers have been turned into just about everything you can think of, including compact homes, coffeeshops, and even hospitals.
Karen Sweeney, Director of Sales at Integrated Equipment Sales commented, “what a great way to bring entertainment to the less populated hinterland!”
The Atlantic also speculates that there may be an ulterior motive to Teterin’s plans on limiting foreign movies in the new theaters.
The construction of the theaters is the third “patriotic” project Russia has unveiled in recent months, leading many to believe that Teterin is simply riding a wave of nationalism that has overcome Russia due to worsening relations with the West.
“There is a trend in support of patriotic businesses,” said Ian Evtushenko, a Russian journalist. “T-shirts with Putin, national fast-food chains of Mikhalkov, and so on. So this is just a part of the bigger picture.”
Regardless of motive, one thing is for sure; shipping containers do a lot more these days than just transport materials.
