In 2005 Hamid Hashemi was an established name in the movie theater industry. He was known as a risk taker with an eye for changing trends. The Florida-based company he led, Muvico, operated a dozen elaborately themed theaters.
The Maryland location—an Egyptian themed 24-screen megaplex–opened in 2000 at Arundel Mills mall in Hanover with a 12-foot statue of Anubis, the Egyptian god of the underworld. The company’s showpiece was a theater in Boca Raton, Fl., complete with a gourmet restaurant, childcare and a VIP balcony inside.
In August 2005, Hashemi was featured in The New York Times in an article about the changing industry which declared, “Muvico may be the most ambitious of them all” and described the theaters that “do not disdain an audience that many theaters already seem to have dismissed—adults who have adult predilections.”
But by Jan. 2006, the Iranian-born Hashemi was being forced out of the company he started in 1984. Early in 2006 he was fired by Muvico’s board of directors after a failed attempt to buy the company.
In a lawsuit filed afterwards, Hashemi alleged breach of contract, while the company’s board accused Hashemi of charging personal expenses to the company. Hashemi alleged in the lawsuit that the board was trying to cheapen the brand, “to provide a ‘K-Mart’ vs. ‘Neiman Marcus’ product and service”, according to an account of the lawsuit in the Miami Herald.
A year later Hashemi emerged with a plan to go above and beyond the amenities he began to pioneer at Muvico. The concept was iPic Theaters. Due to a non-compete agreement he was prohibited from opening a theater close to a Muvico location, so the first location opened in Milwaukee. Soon he would open several others, but the concept was the same—leather seats, digital technology, high-end food, craft cocktails, and the option to have servers wait on you as the movie plays. The price was more expensive—premium-plus seats go for about $20 each—but the goal was to attract high-end customers.
At the new North Bethesda iPic locations’ grand opening last week, Hashemi shied away from attention during a media preview night, but he did wave to the audience after a spokeswoman told an anecdote about he tried hundreds of leather seats before settling on the ones installed at the theaters—the push-button recliners with sliding iPads and small tables.
IPic is also joining a new culinary movement changing food at theaters. Chef Sherry Yard, iPic’s vice president of culinary direction, talked about being a part of two culinary revolutions at last week’s preview event—working with Wolfgang Puck to transform hotel restaurants and then joining him again to open Spago in Las Vegas, which helped create sin city’s reputation as a dining destination. Now she says she wants to be part of a third—transforming movie food.
Just how good is business at iPic? It’s hard to say. Jim Lee, the company’s vice president of marketing, declined to say how much the company invested in its North Bethesda location. Because the company is privately held, its financials aren’t public. But if new locations are an indication of success, then iPic is trending in the right direction–It now has eleven locations, with more on the way in New York City and Houston.
IPic has plenty of local competition for high-end movie goers. Other companies such as AMC are installing recliners in their theaters, while the newest local competitor ArcLight Cinemas, which opened in October at Westfield Montgomery Mall, is pursuing movie purists by offering black box theaters with the latest in projector and audio equipment. ArcLight also offers high quality cuisine at its attached café.
As for Muvico, it would seem the company lost its way without Hashemi at the helm. After opening wildly successful theaters during his tenure—Arundel Mills was one of the highest volume theaters in the country at its height—the company was sold to theater giant Carmike Cinemas in November 2013 after surviving a brush with bankruptcy in 2009.
