A Solution for The Curzon Cinema Building?

If we can ever release the historic Premier Electric / Curzon from the grip of the current religious group who refuse to talk to their neighbours, here's a way we could use the space.

Launched in Portland, Oregon, USA last month, Living Room Theaters intends to create a more intimate and multi-purpose approach to cinema-going.

It's based on the "being-space" concept. You know, that US originated trend of live-in bookshops and cafes of commercial living-room-like settings in the public space, where catering and entertainment aren't just the main attraction, but are there to facilitate out-of-home, out-of-office activities like watching a film, reading a book, meeting friends and colleagues, and so on. Just like William Hill and Metrobet, eh!

The new Portland gaff is a small complex with six screening rooms, each seating 38 to 64 audience members in home-theater style recliners and loveseats or at low-lit tables with plush chairs. Customers can sit down and relax in the screening/living room half an hour before the movie starts, ordering drinks from a full bar and finger food from a tapas-style menu.

Unlike ordinary cinemas, Living Room also serves breakfast, lunch and dinner in a casual restaurant and bar with capacity for 50 people. On sunny days, a roll-up garage door opens the restaurant for sidewalk cafe seating. Completing the being space concept, free wifi is available throughout the lounge and cafe. All of which will help bring in the grown-up customers Living Room Theaters is targeting; not just when they want to see the latest indie flick, but also for meeting up and hanging out in a comfortable, well-designed space.

Of course, let's not forget the actual movies. Living Room Theaters is all-digital, and offers a proprietary digitising technology that lets newcomers distribute their films without the high costs of making and shipping celluloid prints. Digital screening also enables the theater to premiere films that haven't yet been distributed (on celluloid) in the rest of the country. Programming will focus on independent releases and foreign films.

The company's owners both went to film school and started the business mainly to offer audiences a new movie-going experience. They aim to open 10-15 small cinema complexes across the United States.

Slim it down, squeeze it in to the Frobisher Road premises and Bob’s your uncle.

Website: www.livingroomtheaters.com