A Eulogy For Cineworld Renfrew Street

For Glaswegian cinemagoers it is a time of mourning and great sadness. A cinema has closed its doors; it wasn’t just any cinema but a landmark of the city loved by many, an institution if you will. A cinema that despite spending many years under a different but much more popular name then the one it had first, and stood tall among the buildings surrounding it, some may have their own way of describing it, which I accept but for me that is just about what sums up Cineworld Renfrew Street.

It is not a secret that Glasgow has had many cinemas come and go over the years, even in 2023 they said goodbye to the smaller Cineworld at The Forge Shopping Centre in Parkhead. Something about Renfrew Street closing feels different, and I suspect anyone who knows me well enough will know why that is.

But first I want to go back to September 2001, to when this tall building standing at 200ft first opened to the public not as Cineworld but UGC and by 2003 was considered to be the busiest cinema in the whole of the UK due to the high numbers of admissions it had been getting; which is no doubt easy to do when there are eighteen screens spread out over six floors. Outside screening times in archived newspapers there is little to be found about this period but with luck I have come across some pictures from those days, even if they are just exterior pictures of the building with such films as AI, Troy, Finding Nemo and Constantine all advertised outside.

As they would say in the cinema, now is the time for the feature presentation. In 2005 any UK cinema with UGC on it became a Cineworld, which is what happened to the branch in Renfrew Street. In an odd way the timing was perfect, it had a new name and was soon visited by a small five-year-old boy who had never been inside a cinema before, probably didn’t have much say in the matter but would come to have his fondness for cinema cemented in this building as well as other cinemas throughout his formative years. This boy of course was me.

I always have to focus on what was real or jumbled up in my mind. The memory of seeing Charlie And The Chocolate Factory exists in still images or flashes. I always go by what I know for sure: I know Renfrew St was the cinema I was in with my mum and a friend of the family, I remember seeing the grey, and unusually animated characters and skeletons of The Corpse Bride which we’d walked into the middle of a trailer for, which has always slightly amused me due to that film and Charlie sharing directors. I remember seeing parts of the film like the palace melting and the factory. That is all I can be sure about but I know that is what happened.

Cineworld Renfrew Street may have made the first move in my going to cinema but if I am to be honest I didn’t become a frequent visitor there for some time and following on from Charlie between 2006 and 2010 I was there only twice to see Night At The Museum and Charlotte’s Web.

2010 was the point when things shifted. I was now ten years old and could pick and choose what I wanted to see. I’d been away from Renfrew St for some time but it was the evening of 22 January 2010 when I returned. I think I came through the revolving door when it all hit me at once. The place was a hive of activity. A line of people clustered waiting to get tickets, brightly lit neon screens displaying the film times, the criss-crossing escalators all lit up in the same shade of blue, the glass elevator at the side of the building. You don’t need me to tell you that though I had been there before it was like seeing the place for the first time all over again. Not that I minded and I do like to think I took all of it in, even if I did have a screening of Toy Story 2 to be on time for.

In the months and then years that followed from that night, Cineworld Renfrew Street went on to have a significant role in my days as a cinemagoer growing up. Like many people I have many memories of the place, too many to name but if I had to go for another one I think I would have to go with the time I went there on the night of 23 August 2014 when people were pouring into cinemas to see the first episode of the eighth series of Doctor Who, entitled Deep Breath. My parents and I were making a night of it, dinner then the cinema. Upon arrival there were the expected crowds of enthusiastic people lined up, as well as a Dalek in the corner. But it was what was waiting upstairs that I really didn’t see coming. I don’t recall how I saw it and it’s more a case of reconstructing the memory from fragments rather than recollecting it clearly, but something had changed about the Ice Cream counter that was normally occupied by Ben and Jerry’s. It had a different brand-new banner, one whose colours of pink and blue were known to me as was their ice cream which I was known to be fond of. Cineworld Cinemas were now serving Baskin Robbins ice cream. I’d often go for two or sometimes three scoops of chocolate, on the rare occasion even vanilla. And while I have nothing against Ben and Jerry’s this was a rare example of a good and welcome change for Cineworld.

From the later part of the decade to the early ones of the 2020s the numbers of visits I made to Renfrew Street saw a steady increase. It was where I saw things like: every Mission Impossible from Fallout, all three Paddington films and I’m even sure I insisted on Renfrew Street being the cinema where I saw Spectre. As I got older, I was able to see more films and had more free time on my hands. Renfrew Stret tended to be the place where I could be found. When I was eighteen I was filling in the details for my Cineworld Unlimited card and while I wasn’t there at the time when It came to the question of what cinema I was local to, there was no hesitation and in went Renfrew Street.

I hope you won’t consider this overindulgence but there is a final memory from Renfrew Street that I just can’t allow to be left to the wayside. It was December 2023 and I was getting the chance to do something I’d wanted to do for a while – see Home Alone on the big screen. Despite some feeling of uncertainty I got there on time, ice cream in hand and was ready for the film. I wasn’t just seeing it as it was meant to be seen, and how audiences would have first seen it back in 1990. What I didn’t to expect to take even minimal notice of was how the rest of the audience were responding to it. I remember glancing up and around the room and seeing people young and old all invested in what was on screen and enjoying it and when the well-known moments of slapstick came so did bouts of laughter, not from me but from others. Make of that what you will, but for me it was good to know that people still appreciate a film on that level even if it’s older than many of the people seeing it.

I think it was around the end of July 2025 when there was some speculation that Renfrew Street was going to close. At first I don’t think I thought too much of it, things had looked bleak for Cineworld before back in 2022 and yet things carried on as normal. I did visit Renfrew Street soon after that keeping in mind that my days visiting it could be numbered.

Then came the evening of Friday 15 August. I was on the verge of shutting down my computer for the evening when I saw I had a new email from Cineworld. It wasted no time and was to the point. The landlord of the Renfrew Street Cinema was taking the site back, meaning that Cineworld would be shutting down after two decades.

At first I think I found this hard to believe. It was happening, there would be no stopping it, that was all quite clear. A year or two earlier I might have found the idea of something like this happing beyond believability. It didn’t take long for the people around me to start discussing it and once the initial surprise had passed it all sank in and I turned my attention to using what little time I would have left there.

It did not escape me that some people were going to react to this news In different ways. The past had shown me that when cinemas were in danger comments sections of online articled tended to be awash with comments complaining about ticket prices along with anything else that might have been up for rejection. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that there were those who were not taking the news well at all. I was informed that some were gutted about this while others waved the situation off with a muttering of “RIP”. I can respect such opinions but it was not how I would have done it.

In spite of what’s happened there may be a small silver lining. When Cineworld was in trouble before, during which I wrote an article about their situation, the worst thing I could see happening was Renfrew Street closing, and now that it has I don’t see where things could go next. It is difficult to pin down but I do think there is a positive takeaway to be found there.

Cineworld Renfrew Street was loved by many. For me it will always be the first cinema I ever went to and one of the many that had a formidable role in my cinemagoing experiences while I was growing up. I saw many films of all sorts of quality in those screening rooms: great, good, okay, and terrible. I will always remember it with great fondness and as the curtain has closed on it for the last time, let me offer one final thank you.