HMV Cinemas

Sky News reports that HMV, the retail music and DVD chain, will open arthouse cinemas above its stores to add diversity to its trade.

The music and DVD retailer has entered into a joint venture with Curzon Artificial Eye, the operator of the Curzon Cinema chain.

The project will be piloted at the HMV store in Wimbledon, south London.

The 200 seat, three screen hmvcurzon will be situated above the HMV Wimbledon store.

HMV chief executive Simon Fox said that the trial could be rolled out to larger stores, including above branches of Waterstone's stores, which is owned by HMV.

The cinema will be accessible to customers during normal trading hours through the HMV store, but will have a separate entrance for when the store closes.

There is no news yet if HMV will roll out this initiative to stores outside the UK.