Cullman filmgoers and area businesses had reason to enjoy 2005.

The opening of the 10-screen Carmike movie theater near Wal-Mart Supercenter was voted the No. 9 story of the year by Cullman Times staff.

The theater opened May 6 featuring 10 screens, stadium seating and state-of-the-art audio technology. Marketplatz Shopping Center was built around the theater, drawing business from movie patrons and traffic generated by Wal-Mart.

Manager Harold Barnard was still excited a month after the Carmike opened.

“It’s going great so far, we’ve been selling out a lot of movies,” Barnard said June 13. “Everybody really loves this facility.”

With 10 screens, the new theater is far more profitable than the old three-screen facility, he said.

“You’ve got 10 movies so you’re doing 10 times the business,” Barnard said. “In six weeks we’ve already made one quarter of what we would in a year at the old theater.”

The theater’s opening was well-timed, coming shortly before blockbuster “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith,” and other hits like “Batman Begins” and “The Longest Yard.”

Movie patrons said the modern theater, which replaced a three-screen theater in Town Square Shopping Center, was a boon to the city.

“This is in Cullman?” said Wallace State Community College student Mary Doggett, seeing a movie on the theater’s opening night.

Customers can buy tickets to Cullman’s theater online at Fandango.com, and a cash machine is available on-site.

Bill Drinkard of Drinkard Development, which owns two of the shopping centers near the theater, said in August that traffic from Wal-Mart and Carmike provides a natural customer base for nearby businesses.

“The thing that makes any shopping area, the No. 1 thing is potential customers,” he said. “A lot of people go shopping before, and believe it or not, after the movies. Goody’s does quite a bit of business after people get out of the show around 9 (p.m.).”

Many of the nearby stores polled by The Cullman Times in August said the theater drew shoppers to their area. Goody’s clothing store moved from Town Square Shopping Center to the center closest to Carmike around the same time the theater moved.

Several restaurants also opened in the theater’s vicinity, including Arby’s, Chick-fil-A, Zaxby’s, CiCi’s Pizza and Casa Fiesta.

Cullman residents aren’t the only ones benefiting from the theater. People from neighboring counties have driven miles to catch a flick in one of the only stadium-seating theaters in the area.

“All of a sudden, if you are in Hartselle, Alabama, trying to decide where to go to the movies, you’ll come here,” Drinkard said. “Those people in Winston, Blount and Lawrence counties will come here, too, and they’ll shop and eat.”