This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Farmington gets its own movie theater starting Friday, a 14-screen multiplex that boasts state-of-the-art digital projection and a self-service concession stand.
The Cinemark Farmington at Station Park opens Friday, in the new Station Park shopping center built on the other side of Interstate 15 from the Lagoon amusement park.
The theater is the fourth of the chain's so-called NextGen theaters, in which each auditorium boasts a digital screen that fills an entire wall — floor-to-ceiling and side-to-side. One of the 14 auditoriums is equipped with a large-screen format that Cinemark calls XD, or Extreme Digital.
The Farmington theater mirrors the new Cinemark Draper, another NextGen theater that opened on Memorial Day weekend. The other two NextGen theaters are in Texas — in suburban Dallas and suburban Austin.
Cinemark has headquarters in Plano, Texas, but "Utah has always been considered a second home," Alan Stock, Cinemark's CEO, said in a statement. Stock grew up in Roy, and got his start as a teenager working at a Utah drive-in.
When Cinemark started in 1984, it had eight theaters in Utah, Texas and California. The chain has grown to the third-largest in the United States, with 292 theaters operating 3,816 screens in 39 states — as well as another 139 theaters in 13 countries, primarily in Central and South America.