A pan-European industry trade body to promote cinemas as event spaces is being launched.

The Event Cinema Association (ECA) is aimed at supporting movie theatres looking to diversify by showing live events, such as operas, pop concerts, sport, or even interactive audience debates.

Aimed at distributors, exhibitors – and the cinema-going masses - ECA hopes to provide "a united voice for the alternative content industry and work to rebrand live cinema screenings of different kinds of programming as ‘event cinema’ in order to engage other audiences."

News of ECA’s launch is reaching distributors and exhibitors as far away as Brazil and China. Intended originally as a European and UK initiative, organisers have been inundated with enquiries from the US, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, India, Israel, Australia and the Far East, so plans to roll out globally may have to be accelerated, according to chair Melissa Keeping.

"We are delighted that so many parties from all over the world have grasped the intentions and seen the potential of the Event Cinema Association," she said. "Our aims are simple - to increase business worldwide for everyone involved in event cinema. The more members we have, the more good work we can do on their behalf."