London’s Prince Charles Cinema, which specialises in cult repertory screenings, is looking to expand with a second venue, and possibly more.
The cinema has put in a bid to take over and reopen what was the Stratford Picturehouse in east London, which closed last year.
While negotiations remain ongoing with Zedwell LSQ Ltd (owned by the developers Criterion Capital) over the future of the original Leicester Square site, Paul Vickery, the cinema’s head of programming said the exhibitor wants to expand in what could be the first of several new outposts.
“Given what’s happened this year, I understand how it could look like we’re trying to shift operations but that’s not what’s happening,” Vickery told The Guardian, who first reported the expansion plan.
“We were looking for a pre-existing venue that needed a bit of love which we could turn into a new site.”
Vickery confirmed to Screen that while there are no plans currently in motion for a third or fourth venue, it is an aspiration of the exhibitor. He also said that there is no additional investment backing the expansion, beyond the cinema’s current business model.
This isn’t the first attempt at expansion from Prince Charles. In 2022, the cinema put in a bid to take over the Edinburgh Filmhouse, which was rejected. The Filmhouse reopened earlier this summer under the ownership of Scottish property company Caledonian Heritable, and run by former Filmhouse staff.
In January of this year, an online petition was launched protesting against a break clause in the landlord’s latest contract, which would allow the cinema to be closed with only six months’ notice. The petition currently has 165,293 signatures.
In May, Westminster Council decided that the Prince Charles Cinema would be included in its list of Assets of Community Value, however, according to a statement on the cinema’s site, “the fight continues to secure a long term lease that will enable us to invest in our future development”.
If a building is listed as such, its owner must notify the council if it is put up for sale. A six-month moratorium on the sale can then be invoked by the local community to give them the chance to raise finance and make a bid to buy it on the open market.
A landowner is not required to sell their property to a community group and the does not have to continue any existing lease.
The Prince Charles opened in 1962, before being converted into a theatre in the mid-1960s. It has been operated by Ben Freedman of Robins Cinemas since 1990.
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