Cult London cinema beloved by Tarantino threatened with closure
A cult London cinema beloved by Quentin Tarantino is at risk of closure amid fears its landlord is plotting a redevelopment of the site.
The Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square 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.
The cinema claims its landlord, which is ultimately controlled by Asif Aziz, a millionaire developer, is demanding a rent increase significantly above market rates and laying the groundwork to shut the business and redevelop the property.
The row is likely to spark concern among film lovers, given the Prince Charles's status as one of the country's best-loved cinemas.
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 venue is known for its seasonal and off-beat programming, including all-nighters dedicated to the Jurassic Park series and Arnold Schwarzenegger films and festive sing-alongs to The Muppet Christmas Carol. It also shows 70mm pressings of classic films and rarely screened foreign language movies.
The cinema has attracted praise from film makers including Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino, who described it as 'Mecca for lovers of quality films'. John Waters, the writer and director of the 1980s hit Hairspray, has called it 'the most depraved and beautiful movie theatre in London'.
The Prince Charles said its landlord Zedwell LSQ, which is ultimately controlled by Mr Aziz, was demanding a rent increase significantly above market rates.
It said Zedwell had also demanded the insertion of a break clause that would require the cinema to vacate the premises at six months' notice should the company receive planning permission to redevelop the site. The cinema said it viewed this as a 'clear intention' to repurpose the building.
Zedwell is part of Mr Aziz's Criterion Capital, which owns prime property in London's Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus.
The Prince Charles said: 'We believe that these tactics amount to an attempt by the landlord and Criterion Capital to use their significant financial resources to intimidate us, regardless of our legal entitlement.'
The cinema, which is owned and operated by Bubble Chamber, plans to launch legal proceedings in an effort to secure a renewal at market rate and protection from any redevelopment projects. It is also asking customers and fans to sign a petition demanding the removal of the redevelopment clause.
A spokesman for Criterion Capital said: 'Bubble Chamber Limited has initiated lease renewal proceedings on Prince Charles Cinema and the landlord has responded in accordance with Landlord and Tenant Act 1954.'
Criterion's flagship project is the London Trocadero, which has been partly converted into the Zedwell, a hotel with more than 700 windowless rooms.
The developer has previously attracted controversy after unveiling plans to convert part of the building's basement into a mosque. It is also under fire for its plans to close the world's first YMCA on Tottenham Court Road after buying the site last year.
Phil Clapp, the chief executive of the UK Cinema Association, said: 'The Prince Charles is unique in a lot of ways and it has a symbolism and a value that goes beyond even the fantastic service it provides to its audiences.
'It's an institution and I think its loss would be keenly felt not just by its audiences but by the broader London and national cinema ecology.'
The site first opened as a theatre in 1962 before gaining notoriety in the 1970s as a pornographic film house. During this time it claims to have hosted the UK's longest theatrical runs of erotic films Emmanuelle and Caligula.
In 1991, the Prince Charles was taken over by Robins Cinemas and found its niche as a repertory cinema playing cult classics for £1 a ticket.
The cinema generated headlines in 2023 when it announced it had no intention of changing its name ahead of the coronation of Charles III.
Last year it was forced to cancel the world premiere of The Last Screenwriter, a film written entirely using artificial intelligence (AI), following a backlash from customers and across the industry.
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AI has no heart; it is a reflection or echo of the human heart, which is intimately tied to our consciousness, through our desire and need to understand our experiences. We will (and should) apply filters to what AI produces, most importantly to assess the trustworthiness of the output and to parse for uncanniness. But other key filters that should be applied are "creative originality" (which we use as a proxy for "effort") and the shared value or impact on a larger human scale. And finally, if we are open to the potential and don't become too paranoid about the risks, generative AI tools and technologies will allow any creator to produce visually compelling content without massive capital, expertise or compromise, effectively leading to the democratization of creative expression. "And then the fire came and burned everything," he says, casually mentioning that seven weeks before our conversation, the Palisades fire consumed his home and everything in it. "Destroyed all my life's work on my personal side of painting, plus the house." The matter-of-fact delivery is almost as startling as the devastation itself. Yet Carter describes something closer to liberation. "I wanted to kind of cull through it [anyway]," he explains. The collection had become a burden because, "The kids would have to deal with it." The fire forced a creative reset that parallels his openness to AI. Just as losing his physical archive freed him from the weight of past accomplishments, engaging with AI freed him from traditional assumptions about creative collaboration. "Plan A went away," Carter says, highlighting that instead of setting new goals, he's "finding this new stage that's just not hung up on the thing being resolved, the entity being created, and that's it." 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For Carter, AI isn't the end of artistic authenticity but the beginning of a new kind of creative dialogue—one that requires the same trust and collaborative spirit that has always driven great filmmaking. A partner waits, ready to respond to whatever prompts human creativity can imagine. After a lifetime of unrivaled creative expression that has played a defining role in human culture, Carter is more excited than ever about our uncertain creative future. He embodies the creative resilience the entertainment industry needs. "I'm interested in the process of how things are coming together or falling apart," he says. "New exploration."
