It’s been a journey for owners Tammy and Charlie Prince but this Saturday, Taupō’s Starlight Cinema is back – with seven different options on offer.
The cinema begins screenings on Saturday (March 28) and the whole process has been a long four years, Tammy says.
She and husband Charlie bought the former cinema in 2022 and knew they had a year of business because the building was not up to seismic code.
This stretched to two due to the COVID pandemic interrupting the availability of building materials and demolition services.
“And then it took us a long time to find this building. So, it’s been four years since we bought that and knew that we were going to rebuild… and I thought we’d have it built in 6 months.”
The Starlight’s new website even describes finding the right building as “a two-year odyssey”, particularly to find one that could handle cinema-worthy ceiling heights.
Everything inside is brand new, say the couple, new screens, new immersive surround sound, and with the seats they went all in on comfort.
They are plush, roomy, and built for long movies – the look not too dissimilar to flying first class.
Screen 1 (44 seats) even features slightly larger, extra-recline seats for maximum coziness.
Screen 2 seats 37 and Screen 3 can handle 32 viewers, with all having space for a wheelchair and accompanying aide.
She says the brief she gave to the designer was for the interior to look classy, with a feel of old money. She is hoping it will still look as good in 100 years and still be fashionable.
“Classic. I didn’t want anything trendy… I knew I wanted it to be different.”
And while red is the iconic cinema seat colour, she didn’t want that or black.
“It just didn’t match anything else.”
Online ticket sales have been going nonstop, says Tammy.
Just after lunchtime on Thursday, when LakeFM visited, they had been getting a sale a minute.
Despite being a small independent theatre, she says it’s not hard to work with the various different movie companies so getting titles shouldn’t be a problem.
“They want to make money, so they’ll give you whatever you want, really.”
Though they do set some screening scheduling requirements.
As a keen movie watcher herself she says she loves going through the calendar of films available from each distributor.
“So you’ve got like Universal and then Warner Brothers and Sony and Disney. And then you can just see throughout the entire year what every single distributor has through the year. It’s awesome.”
They should also be able to access a back catalogue of movies, within reason, if there are special requests.
She also says they should be able to cater for local groups, such as The Great Lake Film Society, wanting to have movie screenings of their own short films.
“I don’t know when we’re going to fit them in, but we’ll get them in.”
They have already got two fundraisers booked in as well which they are happy to provide for.
“We’re actually going to work on getting a feature where you can sell your fundraiser tickets on our website. Then it’s just an extra enticing perk to have. And a service that I think for a premium cinema, which is what we want to be, you’ve got to have.”
And she says the well-known and much loved Starlight Cinema jingle will be back.
“Right at the start, we were talking about changing it, because it doesn’t make sense now – we’re not in the Starlight Arcade. And people were up in arms, like, I would actually be scared to leave my house if we changed it.”
Staffing hasn’t been a problem as many of the old staff have returned.
“They wanted to come back. So they went and got jobs after we closed down and then they have now quit their jobs.”
And while last minute finishing was still happening two days before the first screening, she was glad they had managed to get everything done in time before the school holidays.
Though Tammy herself wasn’t anticipating these being particularly restful for her.
“We really pushed for March 28 because it gives us like five trading days before the holidays start. And I just feel like the staff are going to need that. And me, to be honest.”
This story has also appeared on LakeFM Journey to open new Starlight Cinema finally realised
