Event Broadway's shuttered cinema is re-opening
Event Broadway's shuttered cinema is re-opening
But will you use it?
A year after being shuttered, Event Cinemas Broadway is re-opening it’s doors in Newmarket for screenings three days a week. But there’s a problem: a shiny new cinema attraction has opened in a Westfield mega-mall just down the road. Can the old school cinema compete? Will anyone use it? I have some thoughts. Let’s go…
When I was a ‘90s kid growing up in Whanganui, the city’s first mall opened up down the road. I remember the opening night well. My parents drove us down to the Whanganui River and we stood in the dark as fireworks lit up the sky. Those kinds of things didn’t really happen in Whanganui. It was kind of special. Along with the smell of gunpowder, there was a definite buzz in the air. A mall? In Whanganui? Whoa.
Trafalgar Square was nothing special. It certainly isn’t anywhere close to the size of a Sylvia Park or St Lukes. KMart, where we stole lollies out of the pick ‘n’ mix, was at one end. The food court consisted of McDonald’s. A chemist was in the mix, a couple of clothing shops, and a music store, which is pretty much the only shop I visited. It’s where I spent all my money on seminal ‘90s CDs like Bleach, Core and Ten.
Later on, down the other end of the building, I got my first job as a butchery clean-up boy in Foodtown’s meat section. I earned $4.83 an hour for donning rubber gloves and cleaning fat off shiny, sharp machinery. I once pranked a mate by pretending a pig’s tail was actually my severed finger. Two showers wouldn’t get rid of the sour stank after a shift. I lasted just three months before switching to stocking shelves.
Sorry for the detour, but I’m trying to make a point. Just weeks after Trafalgar Square opened, there was a revolt. Shopkeepers on Victoria Ave, the city’s central stretch, were outraged. No one was visiting them anymore. Everyone was going to the mall, spending their money at KMart and eating burgers and nuggets at McDonalds. As things tend to do in Whanganui, the fracas went on for months.
It might still be going on now. I don’t know. I haven’t been back in years. But it wouldn’t surprise me.
Why am I talking about any of this? Yesterday, Event Cinemas announced it will re-open its shuttered cinema Event Broadway on July 9. The theatre has a history stretching back decades, including hosting massive movie premieres for Star Wars and The Matrix, as well as Quentin Tarantino. It will only be open three days a week. In a statement supplied to Boiler Room, Event Cinemas had this to say:
“Event Cinemas Broadway is excited to be reopening its doors following a temporary but extended closure due to the impact of Covid-19. The Broadway team have been working hard behind the scenes to get everything ready to welcome locals back to the cinema from Friday 9 July. To celebrate the reopening, movie lovers can enjoy special $10 movie tickets across all screenings at Event Broadway on Friday 9, Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 July.
“Initially on reopening, Event Cinemas Broadway will be open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays playing A Quiet Place 2, The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It, Cruella, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, In the Heights, Hitman's Wife’s Bodyguard, Spirit Untamed and Fast & Furious 9. With a pipeline of big blockbusters coming to cinemas over the coming months, Event Cinemas Broadway is thrilled to be welcoming customers back this month to watch movies on the big screen, enjoy hot popcorn and delicious Choc Tops.”
Long-time Boiler Room readers will remember I wrote about all of this shortly after Event Broadway shut its doors last year. I called that piece A eulogy for a shuttered cinema. Randomly, I’d just happened to walk past my favourite Auckland cinema (sorry, iMax) in July and the doors weren’t just shut, they were boarded up. It was a depressing sight. Naturally, I took some photos…
At the time, an Event Cinemas spokesperson told me it was “temporarily closed” after suffering the effects of Covid-19 lockdowns. They also said they’d have something to announce soon. I wasn’t holding my breath, so I’m glad they’ve stuck to their word. “We've missed you... Tickets on sale soon!” they wrote on Facebook last night.
This, on the face of it, is good news. We definitely don’t need another abandoned cinema complex in Auckland right now. Movie theatres have definitely taken a hit over the past year, but signs are there that they’re in recovery. Fast & Furious 9 has nabbed the biggest post-pandemic box office takings yet, and it’s been followed by In The Heights, another sure-fire musical winner from Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda.
As reported by The Spinoff’s Alex Casey, other cinemas have been switching things up, offering everything from album listening sessions to retro screenings of The Neverending Story to lure punters back. My son has been saving his pocket money with his friends so he can book a theatre out for a big screen gaming session soon.
This isn’t going to be an easy re-opening for Event Broadway. The problem isn’t just that the cinema’s been shut for a year. People’s habits change. Just like Trafalgar Square in Whanganui, a shiny new attraction has opened up just down the road. At Westfield Newmarket, you can enjoy rooftop dining, buy Back to the Future and Stranger Things sets in an official Lego store, and get lost in floor after floor of state of the art shopping.
Here’s something else you can do: sit in a brand new library-themed cinema stocked with books, eat retro lollies, and call on ushers to bring burgers and cocktails to your leather chair as you take in Fast & Furious 9, or In the Heights, or whatever it is you want to watch. At just three days a week, can Event Broadway really compete with this? Only time will tell.
In the meantime, here’s what Whanganui’s mall looks like these days…
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I'm so glad they're reopening it & I hope it survives. It's one of my favourite Auckland cinemas & I found it so strange that they did essentially a full refurbishment at the same time the Westfield cinema was being built & then shut it down not long after the refurb was done.
Maybe Event will keep it as a cheaper offering compared with Westfield? I was keen to check out the fancy library cinema there but the prices are ridiculous.
Close to 20 years ago, Wellington had two Hoyts cinemas (10 screens) in the central city on Manners Mall and Manners Street. Then Reading Cinemas opened up on Courtenay Place and overnight, the Hoyts cinemas were ghost towns. Except on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (also school holidays) when the Reading Cinemas sold out and Hoyts got the overflow. My guess is it's maybe less expensive to mop up the overflow from up the road during peak times than to break the lease (which is surely expiring soonish anyway because why else would you build another complex just up the road instead of renovating?) It's really unique to Auckland as a Premiere space, but in the end I think Hoyts Manners Street became offices, and Manners Mall definitely became a hostel/apartment complex ("The Setup"). For years those cinemas held on: they consolidated management, and reduced opening hours and staff, but they only had busy shifts when Reading was sold out or they had something unique. Broadway simply cannot compete with the new cinema outright, especially not in 2021. But is 2 stories (including projection) of huge open space in a pretty great location. Ultimately, I'm more confused by this whole thing (even moreso than the iMax building) because it's surely more "valuable" to the owner as residential real estate? Yet there must be a reason Event are holding on to it.