Cinemax

One of the most recent entries into the cinema business in Uganda, having started business late December 2013, Cinemax Uganda is located on Ham Towers, a magnificent multi-storey glass mall overlooking the entrance of Makerere University. This mall/cinema hall has got big plans to revolutionize film exhibition in Uganda. The building opened doors to a multiplicity of high-end businesses such as boutiques, exotic food courts, banks, shopping franchises, health club, gym, sauna, apartments and a penthouse, complete with a large parking lot outside and in the basement. The cinema also boasts of a spacious and opulently furnished lounge where patrons can relax with a drink or playing video games while waiting for their next movies.
Cinemax has two screens on two floors. Although they are in close proximity to Uganda's premier university with an over 30,000 student population, the manager insists the students are not their prime target but rather the general public. To this end, he says students constitute less than half of their audience, most of the audience coming from the customers that frequent the countless businesses around the complex. They also target mostly middle class citizens that have some disposable income. They are yet to screen a local production and the manager is not sure this will constitute their policy because they don't think their kind of audience is ready for this. General manager Eddie Nsubuga said they might probably accept some movie launches where they can rent the cinema at a subsidized fee as a form of support for the industry but not overt programming of local films because it does not promise any serious returns as far as their calculations are concerned.
Nsubuga expressed readiness to forge partnerships with independent film exhibition platforms such as Amakula Kampala to utilize the cinema on a mutually agreed deal that will enable them add Amakula's wide audience to their own, the publicity that comes with it and hopefully to make some money off it as well. This could be used as part of the corporate social responsibility.