As part of the bankruptcy plan it announced Thursday, Loews Cineplex Entertainment Inc. says it wants to immediately close 22 of its 365 US theaters and 25 of its 114 movies houses in Canada. At least 50 more will be shuttered in the future, the New York-based chain said.

In announcing its bankruptcy filing, Loews president/CEO Lawrence J. Ruisi also said his company had reached an agreement to be acquired by a group that includes Onex Corp.--its single largest creditor--and two LA-based investment companies, Oaktree Capital Management and Pacific Capital Group.

The proposed acquisition must first be approved by US authorities, as well as Loews' creditors and shareholders. The investment group plans to convert its $250 million in bank debt into an 88% stake in the slimmed-down Loews. The plan calls for unsecured creditors to get the remaining 12%.

Shareholders would get nothing, but many commercial real estate owners who have Loews as a tenant would share their pain. The company is asking court permission to break leases for 22 under-performing US theaters, with a combined 122 screens, and then immediately shut them. Earmarked for immediate closure are seven theaters in Illinois; three each in Idaho and Utah; two in Washington, and one each in New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Florida, Minnesota, Virginia and Texas.

Even more closures are expected, on top of the more than 160 Loews shut last year. "There was no other way out," Sean Egan, managing director of credit rating agency Egan-Jones Ratings Co. in Philadelphia, said of the Loews announcement. "Now it's a question of how the industry will shake out over the next couple of years."

At least 10 theater chains have sought bankruptcy protection over the past several months, paying the price for a screen-building binge that lasted throughout the last half of the 1990s. The bankruptcies have cost hundreds of retail-property owners millions in lost rent, not to mention leaving many projects without a theater to draw crowds to shop at neighboring stores.

Compounding problems for investors, the string of theater bankruptcies comes at a time when dozens of department-store chains and other retailers are closing selected stores or going out of business altogether. In the past two months alone, Montgomery Ward announced plans to go out of business and close all 250 of its stores, while J.C. Penney Co. says it will shutter 45 outlets and Sears, Roebuck says it would close more than 80 of its NTB and Sears Hardware outlets.