With a saturated market at home and growing opportunities overseas, U.S. companies are exporting another icon of American culture - the multiscreen movie theater.

After sending hamburgers abroad in the 1960s and shopping malls overseas more recently, corporate America is now filling an untapped foreign market for clean, shiny cinemas that offer a choice of films.Divisions of Warner Brothers, Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures Corp. and theater owner Cinemark International are among the U.S. companies spending hundreds of millions of dollars on complexes from Brussels to Buenos Aires.

This overseas move underscores growing U.S. exports of services - including in this case architecture, "Made in America" lifestyle concepts and films. It also shows the advantage U.S. exporters have in sectors where a U.S. market lead can be applied in other nations.

U.S. firms are finding that overseas audiences - tired of poor sound systems, wobbly screen images and broken seats - are eager to experience the magic of the movies from the new multiplexes.

"They call them flea pits," said Millard Ochs, president of Warner Brothers International Theaters, referring to the old, tacky theaters found in Britain. "We can offer better sound, larger screens and improved sightlines."

Warner Brothers has an ambitious five-year plan to open 275 theaters throughout Europe with various partners.

The first U.S. multiplex cinemas opened in the 1960s with some six screens, although various individuals lay claim to the actual first theater. The number of screens per theater edged up in the 1970s and 1980s to 10- and 12-screen complexes, frequently anchors in suburban shopping malls.

Stephen Knibbs, managing director and vice president at UCI U.K. & Ireland Ltd. in Manchester, England (a joint venture of Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures in Hollywood), said the multiplex concept gives filmgoers the choices they want while adding to companies' bottom lines by letting theater owners show a greater number of films for longer periods.

A new film, for example, can be shown in a complex's 550-seat theater when it opens and then moved to a smaller, 150-seat space as new films come out, Knibbs said.

Industry experts say U.S. movie exhibitors are selecting new markets with the same criteria that any U.S. investor uses when considering heading overseas.

"We look at markets that are economically sound, politically stable and (with) a dearth of modern multiplexes," said Howard Licht-man, executive vice president of marketing and communications at Cineplex Odeon Corp. in Toronto.

The Canadian company opened its first overseas complex, a six-screen theater, at a mall in Budapest, Hungary, last November. He declined to provide specifics on the company's overseas plans but said officials have identified Central and Eastern Europe as its initial target.

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For Cineplex International in Dallas, its move south of the Rio Grande was a natural transition. The company has opened 11 theaters with 114 screens in Mexico over the past three years.

The popularity of the new cinemas - which have the same amenities as the firm's 167 theaters in the United States and Canada - has prompted the company to move several thousand miles further south into Chile and Argentina.

Jeffrey Olick, an associate professor of sociology at Columbia University in New York, sees foreign demand for U.S. theaters as another example of overseas hunger for popular American culture.

"The notion of unlimited choice is an American commodity. The idea of choosing among a smorgasbord of possibilities," Olick said. "Since World War II, the United States has been an economic and cultural power . . . it's been able to export its culture and ideology."

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