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National Amusements

National Amusements, Inc. is an American privately owned movie theater operator and mass media holding company incorporated in Maryland and based in Norwood, Massachusetts.

The company owns more than 1,500 cinema theaters throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, and Latin America under several brands, such as Showcase Cinemas, Multiplex Cinemas, and Cinema de Lux. It is the controlling shareholder of Paramount Global.

A preliminary agreement was signed on July 2, 2024, by Skydance to acquire National Amusements and merge with Paramount. According to the preliminary agreement, Skydance Media would pay $1.75 billion to National Amusements.

History

The company was founded by Michael Redstone in 1936 in the Boston suburb of Dedham as Northeast Theater Corporation, operating a chain of movie theaters in the region. In 1959, when the founder's son Sumner Redstone joined the company, it was renamed National Amusements, the present name.

On June 10, 1987, the company became the majority owner of the original incarnation of Viacom, a former CBS subsidiary syndicating television programs to stations around the United States. Since the buyout, Viacom continued to expand through purchases from the early 1990s to the early 2000s, announcing plans to merge with Paramount Communications (formerly Gulf+Western), parent of Paramount Pictures, in 1993 (which closed in 1994), buying the Blockbuster Video chain in 1994, merging with the original CBS Corporation in 2000, and acquiring BET Holdings (which became BET Networks) in 2001.

In March 2005, due to Viacom's declining stock price, National Amusements announced that it would split its media subsidiary into two companies that would remain under its control, which was completed on December 31. The original Viacom became the second CBS Corporation as it kept CBS, Simon & Schuster, and Paramount Network Television (now CBS Studios), among other assets, while MTV Networks, BET Networks, and Paramount Pictures were spun-off to a sister company under the Viacom name. The second iterations of Viacom and CBS Corporation commenced trading on January 3, 2006.

At the end of 2008, due to financial troubles, owners Sumner Redstone and Shari Redstone sold $400 million of nonvoting shares in National Amusements. In October 2009, the company sold almost $1 billion of its interest in the stock of CBS and Viacom and sold 35 theaters to Rave Motion Pictures. Today these theatres are owned by Cinemark, AMC, Alamo, or have closed. National Amusements now almost exclusively operates theaters in the Northeastern United States (with the exception of one location in Ohio). The following year, National Amusements planned to sell $390 million of notes to refinance a large part of the company's bank owed debt.

In 2019, it was announced that the multinational media conglomerates controlled by National Amusements — Viacom and CBS Corporation — would re-merge to form a new company named ViacomCBS. Viacom and CBS announced that the merger would close on December 4; following the official close, the company began trading on NASDAQ the following day. In 2022, the company was renamed Paramount Global.

In January 2024, it was reported that film producer David Ellison was interested in buying National Amusements from Shari Redstone. If the acquisition would be closed, the company would be placed under Ellison's Skydance Media. On June 11, 2024, a spokesperson for the National Amusements stated that the company “announced that they have not been able to reach mutually acceptable terms regarding the potential transaction with Skydance Media for the acquisition of a controlling stake in NAI.”

Current operations

The company operates more than 1,500 movie screens across the Northeastern United States, the United Kingdom, and Latin America under its Showcase Cinemas, Showcase Cinema de Lux, Multiplex Cinemas, and Cinema de Lux. In Canada, National Amusements also owned Famous Players theatres through Viacom which today are now owned by Cineplex Entertainment and Landmark Cinemas. In 2004, National Amusements acquired the Brazilian operations to cinema chain UCI, and revamping it to be more in line with Showcase. They also share some of the corporate identities of Showcase and have XPlus & De Lux rooms in selected cinemas, as well as fully reclining seats.

National Amusements owns a 9.7% equity stake and 79.9% voting interest in Paramount Global, and used to operate its predecessors, CBS Corporation and The second Viacom before their closure in 2019, both split from the also defunct First Viacom. The company may hold an unspecified stake in Audacy, Inc., as part of the reverse Morris trust that spun CBS's radio assets off to that company; CBS Corporation shareholders overall held a 72% stake in the then-named Entercom as of the spin-off.

Sumner Redstone, who was National Amusements' chairman, CEO and owner, died on August 11, 2020.