Officials from Peace Cinema denied a report in the local Youth Daily that the cinema's senior staff participated in online ticket scalping for IMAX screenings of the sci-fi film Avatar.

According to the report yesterday, an employee of a local Internet ticketing company identified as "Little B" told a Youth Daily reporter that he had some Avatar IMAX tickets for sale for screenings on Sunday evenings, January 23 and 27.

He was charging 500 to 850 yuan (US$124) per ticket.

"Little B" said that all the tickets were bought directly from the cinema's senior staff members, who had already raised the ticket price to 400 to 600 yuan from the original 150 yuan when he bought them.

Despite the extra charges, those tickets were still popular on the Internet because scalpers around the cinema charged even more, about 1,100 yuan for each ticket, the newspaper said.

Peace Cinema took issue with the account.

"What the newspaper says about us is defamatory and totally untrue," said Wang Bozheng, general manager of the cinema. "We have reported the case to the security authorities, asking them to begin an investigation and collect evidence. We will also reserve the related right for appeal."

Wang said it was impossible for the cinema staff to collude with Internet ticketing companies because the theater's old online ticket pre-selling service expired November 27.

"It means that people can only buy Avatar tickets from our ticket office," he said.

"We have reason to doubt the authenticity of 'Little B,' who doesn't use his real name in the report," Wang said.

On Saturday the cinema launched its contingency 24-hour ticket pre-selling service for any IMAX screenings of the movie this month. The ticket price remained unchanged at 150 yuan.

Since there are only several thousand IMAX tickets left for this month's screenings, the cinema's ticket office running time will return to the former times of 8:45am to 11pm, beginning today.