T Joy, a member of the Toei Group, is to open its second all digital multiplex cinema next month in Niigata, northern Japan.

The eight-screen complex with a 1,600 seat capacity has cost $6.7m (Y800m) and will open on July 13 in. The company opened its first multiplex of this type, which projects digitised films downloaded from a communication satellite in Hiroshima in last December. Since its opening it has clocked in 135,000 admissions.

T Joy has plans for similar multiplexes nationwide, including Toei's Oizumi Studio City, which opens in Tokyo in this December, Umeda (Osaka, Spring 2002), Sapporo (Hokkaido, Spring 2003) and Shinjuku (Tokyo, Spring 2004).

Although a recent multiplex building boom may lead to over-screening, T Joy sees a great potential in the digital side of the business. And in five years, the company plans to be operating 100 digitised screens and eventually equip all its theatres with digital cinema projectors.

"Our marketing strategy as a digitised film exhibitor is to release films with a great potential to be box office hits, not simply those films made with digital technology," said Hiroshi Inokuchi, T Joy's project manager.

Toei has been moving aggressively into digital filmmaking, producing a $11.6m (Y1.4bn) adaptation of a literaty classic by Murasaki Shikibu, A Thousand Year Love -- The Tale of Genji (Sennen No Koi - Genji Monogatari), which is being shot and edited in both digital and non-digital formats. The film is currently in production and will be released domestically in January 2002.

It is also set to produce a fully digitised film, Mask De Rider Agito, based on a popular TV live action series. Shooting is set to start in July.