AMC Entertainment and Loews Cineplex Entertainment plan to combine to create a company with 5,900 theater screens that will be a more formidable competitor to market leader Regal Entertainment Group.

JPMorgan Partners and Apollo Management, which bought AMC in December, will own 60% of the new company. Bain Capital, Carlyle Group, and Spectrum Equity Investors, owners of New York-based Loews since last year, will own 40%, the companies said yesterday in a statement.

AMC, already no. 2 in the industry, and Loews may gain a stronger bargaining position in negotiations with movie studios over terms for showing films. That would help the new company weather the slump in box-office sales that has trimmed receipts 7% this year. Combining the two will probably let JPMorgan and the other private equity firms recoup more money in an initial share sale.

“With bigger scale they’re in a better spot,” said Meredith Fisher, a New York based analyst at Jeffries & Company who said an IPO is likely.”There will be more consolidation in the industry.”

The deal would create a company with 13% of the market, compared with Regal’s 17%, and consummate a merger that the two companies first attempted more than 18 months ago. Loews, then owned by Toronto-based Onex, and AMC, then a publicly owned company, failed to reach an agreement on price.

JPMorgan and Apollo paid $2 billion for AMC in December. Bain, Carlyle, and Spectrum bought New York-based Loews for $1.46 billion in the middle of last year. Private equity firms typically buy companies in anticipation of making money by bolstering revenue and then taking them public.

“This certainly increases their influence with the studios,” said Raymond Schleinkofer, an analyst with Sturdivant & Company in Voorhees, N.J., who follows the movie theater business. “You have always thought in the back of your mind that they would fit nicely together if a merger was ever done.”

The AMC-Loews combination is expected to close in six to nine months, pending approval by antitrust regulators.

Centennial, Colo.-based Regal, whose shares had dropped 10% this year, has a market value of $2.74 billion. The company reported sales of $2.47 billion in 2004 and net income of $82.5 million. It has more than 6,000 screens, according to the National Association of Theater Owners.

AMC Chairman and Chief Executive Peter Brown will run the business, the companies said yesterday. Mr. Brown, 46, was part of a management group at AMC that helped navigate the company through a slump in revenue and mounting debt, without filing for bankruptcy. At least eight of AMC’s rivals, including Loews and Regal, filed for Chapter 11 protection between 2000 and 2002 after overbuilding larger, multiplex movie theaters.

Loews, which sought protection in February 2001 when it was part owned by Sony and Vivendi Universal, emerged in March 2002, owned by Onex and Oaktree Capital. Regal filed in October 2001 and exited the next January under the ownership of a group led by billionaire Philip Anschutz. That group also bought United Artists out of bankruptcy.

Started in 1904 by Marcus Loew as an Ohio nickelodeon, Loews shuttered more than 100 sites in a 12-month period before filing for bankruptcy.

Theater owners, whose share of box-office receipts increases the longer a film plays, have seen their share of ticket sales erode as movies spend less time in theaters before being marketed for home video. As of June 19, American and Canadian ticket sales have fallen to $3.84 billion from $4.11 billion, according to box- office tracker Nielsen EDI.

“It’s been a disappointing year at the box office,” said Matt Harrigan, an analyst with Janco Partners in Greenwood Village, Colo.

The board of the new company, which will be based in AMC’s hometown of Kansas City, Mo., will have five AMC representatives and four from Loews.