The Prince Charles is the last independent cinema operating in London’s West End. It hosts around 850 films and events each year, attracting more than 250,000 customers.

The Prince Charles Cinema has warned its future is under threat and accused the property’s owner of “intimidation” in a bitter row over the renewal of its lease.

by JustGotJammed

38 comments

  3. It would be a huge disappointment if that cinema is closed 

  4. Oh yes, we could replace it with a multi level brewdog mega pub.

  7. Oh can these developers get fucked? They’re ruining everything that makes London special.

  8. Losing the Prince Charles Cinema would be a huge loss for London, it’s possibly the UK’s most famous cinema and there are basically no other cinemas which show the variety of films that PCC does. I’m really hoping this doesn’t happen, whatever it gets replaced with would be another soulless endeavour for the city.

  9. Nooooo please don’t. I just got the lifelong membership….

  10. Currently in my inbox I have ticket emails for three movies from the PCC. I look through their schedule at least once a week.

    A couple of weeks ago, I went to see Battle Royale on a Wednesday evening and it was the first time I’d had people sitting either side of me since the pandemic. Everyone enjoying a great film, nobody looking at their phone or talking through it.

    I am trying to work through a list of films I never got the chance to see in a cinema and any threat to the PCC would be heartbreaking.

  13. These vultures are obsessed with erasing all culture and turning everywhere into a sterile hellscape.

  14. Noooooooo these property developers are making London soulless

  15. They’ll replace it with a Gail’s

    London losing its independent venues is a tragedy

  17. This would be enough to radicalise me to do anything. Reminds me I need to make a visit, will check their listings now. Long live the PCC.

  19. London’s best cinema being forced out for another Gail’s or Brewdog, no doubt. This needs to be stopped.

  20. All those people who get paid millions for appearing in or making films need to club together, buy it and leave the current leaseholders to run it.

  21. Another historical piece of London identity potentially going away smh

  22. Really, of all places? Bizarre, hope they fight this.

    In 10 years central London will just be a boring hellscape of ovepriced cafes and unaffordable flats cos who needs culture right.

  23. Two of my favourite annual events are the autumn LOTR marathon and the December Home Alone double feature at the Price Charles Cinema. Have been attending these for the past 3 years and I absolutly love the atmosphere and people who come to share the experience.

    PCC is one of the places that makes London special to me and it will be a huge loss if they close down.

  24. I have had a lifetime membership for nearly 7 years now. I think this is my cue to start going often again.

  25. *What*?! No fucking way 😨 I’m a member, and it’s the main place that I see films. It has an unmatched mix of recent releases, older classics, and Criterion films and everything else in between.

  26. Of course it’s fucking Asif Aziz behind this.
    Seems to be on a one man crusade to kill any hint of culture in London, from closing the junction jazz bar, to turning the Trocadero into a mosque and ‘pod’ hotel, via countless pubs becoming shitty flats designed by a fucking spreadsheet.

    And always via IoM holding companies, thus avoiding corp tax on his profiting from the enshitification of London culture and night life. 

    If only there was a dedicated position to halt this descent into some insipid scatter cushion of a city centre. We could give it a lofty title like Tzar or something so everyone knows they’re important.

  27. If we had any fucking culture strategy venues like this would be protected.

  28. Landlords continue to prove their ‘value’ to society.

  30. I bought my lifetime membership to the PCC before I actually lived in London. It’s one of my favourite places here. Abject horror barely begins to describe it.

  31. Aaaah fuck off landlords. They won’t stop until every building in London is an overpriced, soulless flat.

  32. Speculative investment is crushing the highstreet. The Cinema isn’t closing because it’s not making money. The nest of rich-kids that run the investment fund would have seen a speculative estimate that they’d make more money form a block of flats or something. So they’ll close the place down.

    The old “capitalist” idea of opening a business and if that business does well it gets to stay around is close to dead under private equity. Now it’s out-of touch multi-millionaires taking guesses to decide which businesses get to exist.

  33. Another argument against allowing foreign landlords to own property in London!

  34. I love this city, but I also fucking hate what it’s doing to itself.

  35. The enshittification of the world goes on.

    Stop taking things that make people happy please.

  36. Might be a long shot but any chance at getting a celebrity on board with saving it? I know Brendan Fraser frequently visits the theatre during The Mummy marathons. Sadly I know that sometimes getting an A lister on board is the only way to get more eyes on an issue

  37. I worked there for two years between 2000 / 02. Best job ever, so many stories. It CANNOT be allowed to close.

  38. I’ve recently learned of this place trying to find somewhere screening David Lynch films in the wake of his death. I’m from the West Midlands and I can’t find anywhere in a 40 mile radius of where I live that are showing any. Fight like hell to protect these places while you’ve still got them Londoners!

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