Lisieux: seats replaced and a new screen at the cinema

The gain in comfort is undeniable: the Le Royal cinema in Lisieux (Calvados) replaced the 180 seats in its room no. 2 last week. Grégoire Reynaud “thinks” that the old ones “dated from the beginning of the 80s”.

In 2018, “we did €30,000 worth of work on the seats of the two cinemas (The Royal and the Majestic, editor’s note) to enhance them, redo parts, etc.,” says the operator. In fact, it was not the right solution, since very shortly later, we were again in a situation where we had to intervene on the same chairs.”

“After 10 years you have to pay attention”

The Reynaud family postponed this work for a long time, which would have been useless with the long-awaited construction of the new multiplex cinema. But it has still not emerged from the ground, and “after more than 10 years spent hoping, waiting, and at the same time receiving justified complaints from customers concerning the state of the armchairs in certain rooms”, it was necessary to take up the subject.

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

Finally, a great opportunity presented itself: “Our partner Noe Cinémas was doing work in one of its cinemas and had a number of seats equivalent to the one we needed. The planets were aligned, rejoices Grégoire Reynaud. This allowed us to have them at an unbeatable price. We changed all the armchairs in the room for around €30,000, including installation. For 180 chairs, this is a price that cannot be found elsewhere. HAS”

For new seats, you should rather count on “between 600 and 850” per piece, estimates the professional.

The end of infiltrations

A week earlier, the screen in room 1 had been replaced. “Due to past problems with water infiltration, we had major damage to [l'ancien]which was also very old, explains the operator of the Royal. The main property of a cinema screen is to reflect light. He can do it because he’s white. As the screen becomes less and less white, it sucks in light. There, he had reached a stage where he was literally eating the light…

The Reynauds invested €10,000:

“We made this change both because it was the right time to do it, and because we were assured that the roof repair work was finished. The infiltration problems caused a trickle of water to flow on the screen, it was catastrophic. HAS”

Since the closure of the Majestic in 2023, the owners of the Royal have invested around €60,000 to resolve this problem and rebuild a new roof, “which ensures that it will not rain in the cinema”.

Expenses which are accumulating, and which Gr©goire Reynaud hopes to no longer have to make in the near future. With his associates, they responded to the call for expressions of interest launched by the City, which will choose who will build the future cinema, and are crossing their fingers that their application will be accepted.

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