The owner of Vancouver’s Rio Theatre wants movie goers across Canada to sign a petition urging Cineplex to stop blocking films from playing at independent theatres.

Speaking on NL Newsday, Corinne Lea says it’s becoming harder for smaller independent theatres to compete with Cineplex. And she thinks Cineplex’s pending takeover by UK-based Cineworld, will make it harder for thesetheatres to stay afloat.

“It’s common knowledge in the industry that Cineplex dominates the market. It’s been getting worse over the last year,” Lea said. “We’ve been now waiting over five months just to try and book the film Parasite and we still can’t get it because its playing at Cineplex. Who knows how long it will take before they let us get a piece of it?”

She says if a distributor tries to book a film with an independent theatre anywhere near a Cineplex location, Cineplex will threaten to pull all of their screenings of that film in the area, which leaves distributors no choice but to shut out the smaller independent theatres that simply cannot compete.

“There’s just no logical reason for why Cineplex is making Indie theatres wait so long for some movies other than greed,” Lea noted. “They’re just not willing to share and I don’t see any good reason why they shouldn’t be forced to.”

Lea is hoping that the Competition Bureau will step in before the situation worsens across Canada.

As of 3 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 13, the petition had more than 5,700 signatures.