When Cineplex Entertainment opened its new Xscape entertainment center at the SilverCity Newmarket Centre on June 26, patrons were doing a lot more than watching movies. The 10,000-square-foot leisure center has 80 of the latest video games — including virtual bowling — a licensed lounge and the usual suspects of fast-food marketing.

The rethink was the culmination of an unavoidable conflict in the exhibition business: you can only have so many cinemas in one area before they are all start looking empty.

Over the four years since the July 2005 takeover of Famous Players Theatres, Cineplex knew it had a problem on its hands: the 10-screen Cineplex Odeon Aurora and the 16-screen SilverCity. When they were competitors there was a certain sense in the rival behemoths. But once part of the same company, it was a simple case of cannibalization.

‘We determined what would be the ideal number of screens,’ says Cineplex’s VP of communications and investor relations Pat Marshall. And that number was three fewer.

So the company took an architectural scalpel to the SilverCity complex and — 10 months and $2 million later, and just in time for summer — revealed a 13-screen venue with a snazzy hangout Cineplex hopes will be catnip to teens and adults alike. ‘There’s something for everyone,’ says Marshall.

Including — it is hoped — Cineplex.