Grab your popcorn! A microcinema just opened in Cambridge
CBC
They call it the big screen, but this movie theatre experience is pretty small.
The Little Prince Micro-Cinema – a movie theatre with just 12 seats – is opening Friday in the Gaslight District in Galt.
"We're kind of tongue in cheek having fun with the idea of calling it the world's second smallest movie theatre," Leigh Cooney, the owner and operator, told CBC News.
In 2020, Cooney opened his first microcinema location in Stratford, Ont. In 2021, the Stratford location earned the Guinness World Record for the world's smallest movie theatre with just 12 seats.
Like the Stratford location, the new Galt location will also have 12 seats, and will be open to both public and private screenings.
On their website, it says that The Little Prince Micro-Cinema "operate[s] on a community-before-profits model."
"We strive to leave the community a better place than we found it," the website said.
"It's very much a passion project," said Cooney. He said the business does make money, but that it's mostly from private bookings, and it's not a lot.
"Eighty per cent of our time is spent on private bookings," he said. "Every week we do anywhere from two to say eight ticketed movies, like a regular movie theatre," he added, explaining how his small cinema would not survive if he mainly did ticketed events like a regular movie theatre.
"[Otherwise] we'd have to charge like $45 a ticket or something."
Cooney said that what works for them right now is having the theatre booked out for private events where the clients pick what movies they want to watch. He said clients can choose whatever movie they like as long as they are not very recent movies, explaining that the licensing for playing more recent movies "is just too expensive."
"Then of course there's concession sales, and all that on top of [the private bookings]," he said. "So it works out well."
The Galt location was supposed to open in December 2024, but Cooney says he's had to deal with several challenges – some unique to his business idea. The first challenge was the manpower and budget.
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