Cinemas will be able to take advantage of previously untapped markets by screening mainstream films with subtitles.

Since June 2000, film distributors have been making subtitled prints of selected new releases in response to demands from deaf people.

A spokesman for Bromley Odeon, which took over the ABC in Bromley High Street two weeks ago, said subtitled versions of films would probably be shown at the cinema in the future.

Cineworld Bexley, in the Broadway, has already shown subtitled versions of many popular films, including Chicken Run, Shrek and The Mummy.

Manager, Steve Scotlock-Davis, said: “Film companies have now cottoned onto subtitles and realise they are onto a winner.”

But cinemas are unable to advertise subtitled showings far in advance, as distributors do not usually decide on whether to create these versions until halfway through the film's run.

The Filmworks, a new cinema in Bugsby's Way, Greenwich, which recently screened a subtitled version of Hannibal, gets its films from parent company UCI.

Stewart Boreman, film buyer for UCI, said: “A copy of a film is about £1,000 to make and the demand is now fairly small for subtitles.”

“From our exit polls, some people who have inadvertently gone along to these screenings don't mind the subtitles and some find them distracting,” he added.

The Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) has been campaigning for the cinema industry to make films on general release more accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences.

One person supporting the campaign is Greater London Authority assembly member Jenny Jones.

“I personally would like to see subtitles on all the films,” she said. “If you do not need them, you stop noticing them.”

Digital projection, the cinematic equivalent of DVD, opens up the possibility for all films to have subtitles.

Instead of forking out huge sums of money for subtitled versions, cinemas will be able to simply turn the subtitles on or off. But some cinemas are unlikely to be swayed.

Lauraine Pearson, manager of Bluewater Showcase, in Gravesend, said: “The subject of subtitles has come up in the past.

“But it's unlikely our American owners would go down that route.”