It looks like Cuban has begun to aim his sites more at Reading International (RDI and RDI.B) than CKEC but maybe with a master plan involving both. Either that or he's decided the theater assets that Reading has are available more cheaply than Carmike. Cuban filed on June 9 buying a 10.5% interest in Reading's voting shares and yesterday filed increasing his stake to 13.8%. He also acquired a 2.4% interest in the larger RDI non voting shares. Reading is a movie theater plus real estate development company with 468 screens in 58 theaters in the US, Australia and New Zealand, including the Consolidated Cinemas chain, the Angelika Film Centers and Liberty Theaters (the Orpheum, Minetta Lane and Union theaters) in New York and the Rialto Cinema chain in DALLAS (hello, Mark!). Reading's theater operation represents 37% of RDI's book value but it's 92% of their revenues. Their real estate development holdings seem to be on the books at values way below actual market value, even in today's market, as most were acquired many years ago. So, if you back out real estate value, I bet Reading represents a much better cinema cash flow ratio to Cuban than even CKEC did when he got in.

I found this old boingboing.net post from 2003, well before his CKEC purchase. http://www.boingboing.net/2003/09/25/mar... It gives a pretty good flavor to Cuban's view of his vision for an integrated cinema company. With his interest in 3D technology, his vision of putting sports entertainment in 3D theaters as well as movies and other forms of entertainment and his statement, "We are going to be vertically integrated with our other [entertainment] companies....and not play by the rules," you can see how CKEC and RDI tied together into a consolidated, Cuban/Wagner owned company would make sense. BTW, RDI has ZERO Wall St. analyst coverage, so, for the time being, Cuban's involvement is flying under the radar.