“If you build it, they will come”

Kevin Costner, Field of Dreams

Would you like to see a cinema operating in the town showing a wide variety of films, old and new, 6 days a week?  Here is what you do to make that happen – become a member of the Harborough Screen.

If you are a business or work in a business in the town click here

If you are a member of the public and want to go to see movies in Harborough click here

Market Harborough hasn’t had a cinema since 1978 when The Ritz, the towns only remaining cinema closed.  The reason is quite simple – it was too big, and at the time cinema audiences were in decline.  A 1,200 seat cinema was far to big to be supported by a town the size of Harborough.  It was built in an era before TV and when radio was still a novelty.  Whilst many towns converted their cinemas into 2 or 3 screens the ABC Ritz  in Harborough remained a single large screen operation and therefore unavailable.

In September 2007 Lucy Seaward (then 11 years old) approached the Harborough Mail and suggested a better use for the old Ritz site, now empty, would be to turn it back into a cinema.  This started a campaign petition which 8,000 people from Harborough and indeed around the UK and the world signed up to. As a campaign we are still committed to either doing something on that site or finding another suitable site in the town to run as a purpose built cinema.

We have secured an alternative for the town.  Starting life as an 110 seat touring cinema we plan to move it to Harborough, renovate it and with a team of experienced cinema operators backing it, run it for the benefit of the town. It will be known as the Harborough Screen and will show a wide selection of films.

You will not have to be a member to see films at the Harborough Screen when it opens, but membership offers you a great deal of advantages – including discounts and over £400 worth of money off vouchers for goods and services in the town.  It is only by people from the town becoming members that we will have the funds to renovate and operate the cinema in the first place!