Background
Warner Village Cinemas was a European multiplex cinema chain that combined Warner Bros. Cinemas with Village Cinemas. Their locations were primarily based in the United Kingdom, with other locations in countries like Germany and Italy. The chain was created in 1996 and expanded for several years, opening two cinemas in Taiwan, but in the 2000s, other cinema chains bought and re-branded their locations, including Vue Cinemas
1st Logo (March 10, 1989-December 29, 1995)
Visuals: On a black background, the WB shield banner with the text "Warner Bros. Cinemas" on it appears from the bottom of the screen and turns to face us. The main part of the shield comes down from the top of the screen, and as it does so, we can see a white light shining onto the shield. The banner goes into its proper place around the shield as the camera moves away to make room for the stacked words "FEATURE PRESENTATION" in gold, which flips into view from behind the shield and settles underneath it. The camera then zooms toward "FEATURE PRESENTATION", and moves in between the two words and past them.
Technique: CGI by Cinema Concepts and Flying Foto Factory.
Audio: "Fanfare for the Commoner (a)" from the album "Reveals/Logos/Fanfares", from the Chappell AV music library.
2nd Logo (January 3, 1996-1997)
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Visuals: We move through a mechanical door into a futuristic hallway with several doors and screens with gold/bronze outlines that display clips from the Warner Bros. Pictures library. We eventually enter one of the doorways on the right into a room with a filmstrip on the bottom, several small filmstrips showing more clips from the Warner Bros. Pictures library, and a distorted blue background. Soon after we have entered the room, we see three phrases formed one-by-one: "Celebrating 100 years of", "MOTION PICTURE ENTERTAINMENT Excellence", and "NOBODY DOES IT BETTER". The text is in different fonts and colors, and shines after one phrase has appeared. We then zoom out another mechanical door onto a mechanical roof against a dark cloudy sky, where a robotic arm grabs a plate that comes out of the door; on top of the plate are refreshments that have Looney Tunes characters on them. We zoom past the arm and refreshments to see a bucket carrying a red-orange chemical and dropping it into a container. The container's lid is twisted slightly and opens up to reveal the WB shield with the banner saying "WARNER BROS. CINEMAS". The camera zooms up to the shield as the mechanical roof disappears, leaving the shield, the cloudy sky, and several spotlights behind the shield. After a few seconds, the logo fades out. The entire logo lasts for approximately 1 minute.
Technique: CGI by Cinema Concepts and animated by Flying Foto Factory with TDI Explore on Silicon-Graphics workstations.[1]
Warner Village Cinemas
1st Logo (January 3, 1996-1997)
Logo: On a moving space background with stars and purple mist, we see the sun with a lens flare, a hand, and a rotating blue globe with gold continents and white latitude/longitude lines; the globe is levitating over the hand and is projecting a white star-like shape onto the hand. The camera zooms into the globe as several filmstrips encircle the globe. Most of the filmstrips disappear except for three of them, which land onto the United Kingdom, Germany (Deutschland) and Italy (Italia), respectively; each filmstrip is accompanied by silver text and the flag of the nation that a filmstrip lands on. The WB shield without the banner then rotates around the globe to face us as the globe moves off-screen. The shield moves to the left to make room for the Village Roadshow "V" on the right, and the text "WARNER VILLAGE CINEMAS" to wipe in; WARNER VILLAGE is in their companies' respective fonts, while CINEMAS is white and smaller. As this is happening, a pink/white light appears below the logo with a purple spiraling filmstrip, and 4 white lights swirling around it. The logo and filmstrip zoom past us as the light and purple mist disappear, and the moving background slowly stops. Two metal M's form, which make room for smaller text and a line to create the phrase:
INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM
The text is then blown to pieces by an explosion, and when the smoke clears, we see Bugs Bunny in a basketball jersey reminiscent of the jersey from Space Jam, and spinning the globe from earlier on his finger like a basketball. The text "Now Our Feature Presentation" in blue and in script appears below Bugs' face as a Looney-Tunes-esque circle closes in on his head. He winks before the circle closes, and the blue text becomes blue mist, which zooms past us. The entire logo lasts for approximately 50 seconds.
Variant: A variant for the Japanese Warner Mycal Cinemas existed at the time, in which their own logo (The Warner Bros. shield above the Mycal wordmark used by said company) replaces the Warner Village Cinemas logo. This was spotted in a commercial from the 90s for said cinemas. It was also used by Warner Lusomundo Cinemas in Spain.
Technique: A mix of computer animation and 2D animation. Impressive animation for the time period, and some of the animation somewhat holds up today, even if it's somewhat dated. Once again, it was done by Cinema Concepts.
Music/Sounds: A soothing, synthesized orchestra tune is heard as the logo starts with bass drum hits, cymbal rolls, and bell chimes up to the point where the shield appears. When the shield faces us, a synth horn/woodwind melody that is somewhat reminiscent of the ending melody from the first "Warner Bros. Cinemas" logo is heard, as well as a high-pitched synth string chord and synth bells to accompany the filmstrip spiral. A strange spaceship-like humming noise is heard as the logo and filmstrip spiral zoom past us. Metal noises and electric sounds are heard as "INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM" forms, followed by an explosion. When Bugs Bunny is on screen, a remix of "Merrily We Roll Along" is heard with cartoon sound effects, and a whoosh when the blue text zooms past us.
Availability: Extinct. Most likely seen between the mid-90s and the 2000s.
2nd Logo (January 3-September 30, 1996)
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Logo: This short logo is just recycled animation from the 1st logo on a black background. The WB shield without the banner moves to the left as the Village Roadshow "V" appears from behind it and moves to the right. In between the two company logos, the text "WARNER VILLAGE CINEMAS", in the same fonts, colors and sizes as before, wipe in.
Technique: Animation that is recycled from the 1st logo. However, there is a possibility that the animation was taken from this logo for the 1st logo rather than vice-versa. Also, if you look closely, the right edge of the Village Roadshow "V" suddenly appears rather than appearing from behind the shield. This is the last known collaboration with Cinema Concepts.
Music/Sounds: A short, dreamy synth tune.
Availability: Extinct. Seen before the Italian-dubbed Looney Tunes policy trailer until the chain began being merged with Paramount Home Video in 1996.
3rd Logo (September 17, 2010-September 23, 2016)
Logo: Over a sunset background, there are 4 cranes with cameramen on them. We zoom past them as four searchlights emit from the city in the background, a la Searchlight Pictures. We then fade into more searchlights that start to emit as well. The camera starts panning down facing upward where a rollercoaster-like structure builds itself into a swirl where a fireball shoots up from behind. The camera then starts to go zooming up at a sonic-boom type of speed where the searchlights straightened themselves up and make a tunnel. During the tunnel zoom, some Looney Tunes countdown leaders start to play around the tunnel. As soon as the countdown leaders get to 1, we see the Warner Bros. shield and Village Roadshow logo. The fireball hits the shield where it explodes into many pieces of popcorn. We zoom back into place as the logos go from left to right respectively. The text "WARNER VILLAGE CINEMAS" wipes in while the curtains open. When the curtains do, Bugs Bunny appears from behind them. He then zooms backstage. Then the Looney Tunes characters come down from a hanging platform where they build the words "and now our Feature Presentation" in a puff of smoke, brawling with each other as they do with objects such as mallets, carrots, and Tweety's head poking out of the smoke at times. The entire logo lasts for approximately 39 seconds.
Variants:
- An Italian variant exists where "and now our Feature Presentation" is replaced with "e adesso il film di oggi", meaning "And now today's film".
- As with the previous logo, variants for other Warner cinemas around the world such as Warner Mycal Cinemas and Warner Lusomundo Cinemas exist.
Technique: Mostly CGI, with hand drawn animation for the Looney Tunes. Better animation than the previous logos which holds up well to this day.
Music/Sounds: A triumphant orchestral piece, which, at the end of the logo, turns into cartoon music that takes cues from "The Merry Go Round Broke Down". Sound effects like a Hanna-Barbera "running away" sound and a cat yowl complement the cartoon antics.
Availability: Extinct, as by this point, the cinemas were bought by Vue and virtually all of the Warner Village Cinemas were being rebranded as such. Italy still used this ident until their departure in 2009, being merged with Medusa Cinema to form The Space Cinema. The United States also used this ident until Paramount Pictures acquired the remaining shares of the company from Warner Bros. in 2013.
Legacy: This was an absolutely fantastic capper to Warner Village's lineage of idents and bumpers.
Paramount Cinemas
1st Logo (October 1, 1996-October 3, 2000, September 24, 2016-May 22, 2025)
Logo: The last 10 seconds of the 1986 Paramount logo (from 1996-2000), the 2011 Paramount logo (from 2020-2022, 2023-present) or 2002 Paramount logo (from 2022-2023) is shown, followed by the song Happy Days, with scenes from Looney Tunes (formerly Bugsy Malone), Animaniacs (formerly A Dog of Flanders), Zip Zip (formerly Andre. Batman until 2020), Sam & Max (formerly Lassie), Woody Woodpecker (formerly Bon Voyage Charlie Brown), The Loud House (formerly Prehysteria), Phineas and Ferb (formerly Dragonworld), Popeye, Charlottes Web, The Little Mermaid (formerly Explorers) and Tom and Jerry (formerly Searching For Bobby Fischer. Teen Titans Go! until 2022), which was previously known as the Paramount Family Favorites CNTwo AMV.
Technique: The effects in the scenes shown in the CNTwo AMV.
Music/Sounds: The song Happy Days. Sound effects like a Animaniacs "beach ball sitpop" sound and a broken window complement the cartoon antics.
Availability: Current. It was first seen on 1996 VHS releases of Rugrats and Allegra’s Window, including Paramount's rereleases of those shows' tapes Sony Wonder distributed. and is currently used on D-VHS releases starting with the 2020 VHS of Wonder Boys and as a CNTwo AMV since the Warner name got merged to the Paramount name on September 23, 2016 after being temporarily officially retired as a CNTwo AMV after the 2000 VHS of Snow Day: Special Edition. The version with Batman is currently lost with no video footage found of the said version filmed at Paramount Cinemas but pictures.
Legacy: This policy replaced the Paramount Cinemas Cell Phone Policy in 2020, even though NCM's version of the policy was still used until February 3, 2023.
2nd Logo (July 22, 2021-)
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Logo: Unknown.
Technique: Unknown.
Music/Sounds: Unknown.
Availability: Current.
