Cape Town’s Cavendish Square is getting a super fancy new cinema! Nu Metro spent tons of money to make it amazing. They have comfy leather recliners, giant screens that wrap around you, and super clear projectors. You can even order gourmet food and drinks from a chic lounge. It’s all about making movie-watching feel like a special, luxurious escape!
Nu Metro at Cavendish Square offers a luxurious cinema experience with ScreenX walls, Portuguese leather recliners, and advanced laser projection. It features a gourmet food menu, a social lounge with a cocktail bar, and a significant reduction in seating for enhanced comfort, aiming to redefine premium mall entertainment.
Nu Metro’s Cavendish Takeover: A Cinematic Reboot for Cape Town’s Premium Mall Culture
Claremont’s Cavendish Square has always behaved like a chameleon in designer sneakers: every ten years it sheds a skin, swaps anchors, and emerges brighter, pricier, and more impatient with the past. The latest shed is happening on the upper deck where the old Ster-Kinekor once hummed. On 15 December the turnstiles spin again under new colours, and the first public screening will mark the end of a four-month gut-renovation that cost more than most South African indie producers spend on ten features.
Ster-Kinekor’s retreat was not a quiet one. The chain filed notices, paid out packages, and left behind a scar of 3,200 burgundy seats that still smelled of popcorn butter when the last bulb dimmed. Growthpoint, the landlord, watched weekend footfall dip nine percent in the immediate aftermath and decided speed beat sentiment. Exclusive talks with Nu Metro wrapped in six weeks, a timeline that usually takes landlords longer to approve a new coffee kiosk.
The reason for the rush sits twelve kilometres away at the V&A Waterfront. Ster-Kinekor’s IMAX there has been siphoning off northern-suburbs wallets, while living-room couches have become the third competitor nobody can evict. Keeping bodies inside Cavendish after 7 p.m. is now a retail imperative, and a shiny cinema is the closest thing a mall has to a loyalty card that actually works.
Refurb budgets are gossiped about more than movie plots, yet three separate subcontractors have whispered the same figure: “Gateway money,” meaning something north of R120 million. That pile of cash is being converted into 270-degree ScreenX walls, Portuguese recliners trimmed in Alamo-grade leather, and enough RGB laser horsepower to light up a small Karoo town.
Seat numbers drop by 42 percent, but kneecaps celebrate an extra 30 centimetres of civilisation. Six houses go full first-class, two stay large enough for rugby-team outings and midnight Marvel crowds, and every screen scores RealD Ultimate panels plus Christie heads that last made headlines on Avatar 2’s 28-week Durban run. Fibre pipe jumps from 3 Gbps to 10 Gbps, so Los Angeles can shove a DCP into Cape Town before the courier’s coffee cools.
Then comes the data harvest. Each recliner hides an NFC pad that notes how often you flinch, how long you linger, and whether the latest horror trailer made you shift three centimetres to the left. Studios already tweak campaigns from these micro-quakes; Bedford’s pilot run lifted horror-trailer recall by nearly a third. Opt-in lives three clicks deep in the app, and seventy-eight percent of Gateway guests have traded privacy for free popcorn so far.
Concession used to mean neon slush and a chocolate that could survive nuclear winter. The new menu leaks read like a pop-up ramen bar collided with a Constantia wine farm: Karoo-lamb bao, kale dusted in biltong powder, and a Mother-City Mule served in copper etched with the mountain itself. A still-secret Cape Town chef, famous for midnight noodle labs, curates the line-up and aims to push average spend from R68 to R115 within eighteen months.
A 240-square-metre social lounge replaces the old serpentine queue. High-top tables, USB-C wells, and a cocktail licence that runs until 2 a.m. on weekends turn the foyer into what the internal memo calls “a hospitality node,” which is corporate-speak for “please arrive an hour early and spend.” If the model sticks, Growthpoint may import the blueprint to Sandton and Menlyn, fast-tracking Nu Metro into the landlord’s preferred tenant list.
Even the projectionists get an upgrade. Union crews are being offered bursaries to master HDR10+ finishing, a necessity because five local titles next year will land in native 8K. Maintenance is pricier – R3,400 per leather throne every year, and each zapped Christie laser costs R1.2 million to resurrect – but management bets that a R15 ticket premium and a R47 food bump will keep the spreadsheets smiling.
Ster-Kinekor’s exit sliced 42 permanent jobs; Nu Metro rehired 36 after psychometric filters and a hospitality boot camp run by Ascend Group. Average pay rises fourteen percent, shifts shrink to traffic-matched slots measured by Wi-Fi beam counters, and quarterly bonuses hinge on how many craft cocktails leave the bar. Unions mutter about zero-hour vagueness, yet profit-share formulas borrowed from Austin’s Alamo HQ sweeten the pill.
Marketing began with cryptic crimson billboards – just a recliner outline and #SitDownCapeTown. Influencers followed, claiming “weightless viewing” inside a Paarden Eiland hangar, racking up 1.8 million impressions before anything was officially announced. AR filters, NFT whispers, and a chocolate-river rumour now compete for retweets, while competitors plot counter-moves: Nolan on 70 mm at the V&A, Labia crowdfunding an African-doc screen, and MultiChoice flirting with a 5G-drive-in pop-up.
Tickets go live at one minute past midnight on 8 December. A countdown clock ticks inside the app, promising that “magic prefers the big screen.” Whether Capetonians agree will be written one recliner at a time – scanned, warmed, and clinked – until the next chameleon skin begins to itch.
Nu Metro at Cavendish Square is undergoing a significant R120 million renovation to offer a luxurious and immersive cinematic experience. It will feature advanced technologies like 270-degree ScreenX walls, laser projection, and RealD Ultimate panels. Patrons can also enjoy gourmet food and drinks, a sophisticated social lounge with a cocktail bar, and premium Portuguese leather recliners, all designed to create a “special, luxurious escape.”
The first public screening at the newly renovated Nu Metro Cavendish Square is scheduled for December 15th. Tickets went live for purchase at one minute past midnight on December 8th.
Visitors can expect Portuguese leather recliners with NFC pads for personalized data insights, gourmet food options like Karoo-lamb bao and biltong-dusted kale, and a cocktail bar serving bespoke drinks. The cinema also boasts a 240-square-meter social lounge for pre- and post-movie socializing.
Comfort is enhanced with a 42% reduction in seating capacity to provide more legroom (an extra 30 centimetres) and individual recliners. Viewing quality is elevated through 270-degree ScreenX walls, advanced Christie laser projectors, RealD Ultimate panels, and a fibre connection upgraded to 10 Gbps for seamless content delivery.
The new menu goes beyond traditional cinema snacks, offering gourmet options such as Karoo-lamb bao, kale dusted in biltong powder, and a signature Mother-City Mule cocktail. The culinary experience is curated by a renowned Cape Town chef, aiming to rival pop-up restaurants.
Nu Metro aims to attract customers by transforming movie-watching into a luxurious event, offering premium comfort, advanced technology, and a high-end food and beverage experience. The social lounge and cocktail bar are designed to encourage longer stays and increased spending. They also use targeted marketing campaigns, including influencer outreach and cryptic billboard campaigns, to generate significant hype and establish the cinema as a retail imperative for Cavendish Square.
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