Seventeen years ago, Edwards opened the Festival 8 Cinemas, hoping to tap in to the affluent planned community of Anaheim Hills. While the Festival 8 never quite lived up to attendance expectations, the theatre was later expanded to fourteen screens, to stay viable in the megaplex era and trump it’s nearest competitor, Cinemapolis (now known as Cinema City). Yet, the truly notable aspect of this theatre isn’t related to an expansion or modernization, but to it’s roots as Mann’s last Orange County project.
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Back in the Fall of 1991, the Anaheim Hills site was slated to be Mann Theatre’s latest venture in to Orange County, marking the chain’s fourth county venue (Mann had operated ten theatres in the county, at various times). However, foreshadowing the company’s slip from prominence in the decade to come, the project was sold to Edwards, along with the three existing Mann theatres in Brea, Laguna Niguel, and Huntington Beach. Additionally, the sale coincided with an announcement that Mann had officially abandoned plans for a cinema in San Clemente; abruptly ending the company’s eighteen year presence in the lucrative Orange County market.
A year later, on November 19, 1992, the Festival 8 opened as an Edwards and the three other venues carried on under the Edwards brand up until the company filed for bankruptcy. Mann would step back in to the county picture, taking management of both the Laguna Niguel and Huntington Beach theatres once again, but these operations would prove short lived, as Mann was no longer the powerhouse of years past and was forced to relinquished the sites within a few years.
Today, the former Festival 8 goes by the updated Anaheim Hills 14 moniker and stands as somewhat of a “what if” in the history of Mann Theatres. The last Orange County project for the seemingly doomed chain and a little known marker in the company’s decline.
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