Officials with Carmike Cinemas said Friday that a caller phoned in a bomb threat to its corporate headquarters in Georgia, prompting police to search its movie theaters in multiple states for possible explosives.

Carmike spokesman Terrell Mayton said company officials alerted the FBI after discovering the threat in a voicemail message that morning. He said the call was placed after hours Thursday by someone claiming to work for a contractor that provides janitorial services to Carmike.

Mayton said the call threatened specific theaters, but he could not say how many or in what states. News outlets reported police searches in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky and North Carolina.

The Carmike Cinemas located at Barrow Crossing and in Conyers were among those evacuated, according to the Barrow County News and Rockdale News.

Conyers Police Department Maj. Mike Waters said Carmike’s corporate headquarters in Columbus notified his department about the bomb threat around 10 a.m. He said he was informed there were more than 200 theaters nationwide involved in the bomb scare.

“We put a team together and physically checked all the cinemas inside and we did not find anything that would look like an explosive or bomb,” Waters said. “It was a very unspecified threat.”

Mayton said no bombs were found in any of the searches and that most theaters were cleared before their first show times Friday. The FBI in Atlanta did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

While Mayton would not discuss specifics of the call, Columbus police said the caller made an apparent reference to the Sylvester Stallone move “The Expendables 2” that opened Friday.

“It sounded like a disgruntled worker,” Columbus police Lt. Bill Rawn told the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. He said the caller said: “’You don’t pay us enough. You cut back our hours. We’re not expendable. We’ll show you we’re not expendable.’”