Flagship Theatres, the parent company of the Cinémas Palme d'Or at the Westfield Mall in Palm Desert, California, is in a legal battle with Cinemark, which operates the the Century at The River and XD in Rancho Mirage. At issue is the former's contention that the latter is keeping them from being able to book and show certain movies.

The Los Angeles Times published an article about the issue recently:

The new theater owners had high-minded ambitions when they upgraded a rundown multiplex in the resort town of Palm Desert into a seven-screen theater with a French cafe and named it the Palme d'Or, after the top award at the Cannes Film Festival: to create "the desert's premiere address for cinephiles," with a wide selection of top art house, specialty and foreign films that often played only in far-off Los Angeles.

And the owners themselves had impressive show business credentials. They included Bryan Cranston, the Emmy-winning star of the television series "Breaking Bad"; Alise Benjamin, co-producer of the Oscar-winning film "Ray"; and Steve Mason, a nationally known host of an ESPN radio talk show in Los Angeles.

Instead, they find themselves locked in a legal battle with Cinemark, the Texas-based movie theater chain with some 3,850 movie screens across the nation. Their lawsuit alleges that Cinemark, which operates the 15-screen River Cinema in nearby Rancho Mirage, is illegally muscling them out of the marketplace by threatening to retaliate against movie studios that book films into the Palme d'Or. The suit, initially dismissed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, was recently revived by an appellate court. No trial date has been set.

"It's like they're Starbucks and we're a small coffee house and they're preventing us from getting our coffee beans," said Cranston in a telephone interview from Toronto, where he was filming the remake of "Total Recall." "We're fighting for our existence."

But this is more than a David-versus-Goliath battle in the desert. The case is being closely watched by independent theater owners across the country who feel increasingly squeezed by the top four major theater chains, Regal Entertainment, AMC Entertainment, Cinemark and Carmike Cinemas, who operate about 50% of the screens in the United States. Some of the industry's top distribution executives could be called to testify about the normally behind-the-scenes deal-making between studios and theater chains.

Movie lovers also have a stake in the conflict, according to Mason, who says independents like the Palme d'Or are much more likely to program smaller films, foreign-language offerings and documentaries than the large chains, which favor studio blockbusters and other mass-market products.

"If we don't have healthy independent theaters, we're going to wind up with five screens of 'Transformers' at every theater in the country and there will be no room for these smaller, diverse films," he said. "It's about bringing diverse films to the marketplace."

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