130-year industry under threat in South Africa

South Africa’s august cinema industry is in crisis, with declining ticket sales and theatre closures battering the country’s two biggest cinema chains.

A recent MyBroadband analysis found that across Ster-Kinekor and Nu-Metro outlets, the number of cineplexes has declined by roughly a third in the last decade.

There were roughly 76 movie theatre complexes in 2015, compared to 51 in 2025. Over the past decade, Ster-Kinekor closed 21 locations while Nu-Metro shed four.

These declines are substantial when considering that the companies have existed in one form or another for over a century, dating back to the early days of movie theatres in South Africa.

The country’s history of motion picture entertainment began with the opening of the first kinetoscopes in Herwoods Arcade on Pritchard and President Streets in Johannesburg in 1895.

Carl Hertz brought a projector from England and screened a series of 30-second films at the Empire Palace of Varieties in Commissioner Street, Johannesburg, in May 1896.

This was a big hit with the media and the public, paving the way for the Empire Palace of Varieties to make films a permanent feature from 1898.

In 1909, the country got its first permanent bioscope at The Electric Theatre in Durban. Just two years later, the predecessors to Ster-Kinekor emerged.

Africa’s Amalgamated Theatres was founded in 1911 and the Empires Theatres Company followed in 1912. Both were bought by Austrian-Hungarian business tycoon Isodore W Schlesinger in 1913.

Schlesinger merged the companies into African Consolidated Theatres, which became the country’s first central national distributor of movies and variety shows.

He also established South Africa’s first motion picture studio, African Film Productions Ltd, in 1915 in Killarney, Johannesburg.

In 1931, Schlesinger merged his business interests with Kinemas, establishing African Consolidated Films and theatres under African Film Productions.

African Consolidated Films was sold to 20th Century Fox in 1955. In 1969, Sanlam bought the firm from the US studio and renamed the company Kinekor.

At that point, it already owned major studio Ster Films and cinema company Ster Theatres. In 1970, the government permitted Sanlam to merge the companies to form Ster-Kinekor.

While much less is known about Nu-Metro’s history, it also launched its first theatre in 1932 — which makes the company over 90 years old. Its oldest-running Bedford complex has been operating since 1972.

Decades of surviving — and some thriving

Over many decades, the companies survived through tough periods — wars, financial crises, acquisition, and business rescues.

There was healthy growth in the 1970s until the television set became an increasingly common feature in many households.

That resulted in at least one of the two companies — Ster-Kinekor — slowing down its cinema expansions.

However, movie theatres set themselves apart by offering much better quality screens and sound at a time when the limits of technology meant blockbusters were not as enjoyable on televisions.

Ster-Kinekor even briefly expanded into Europe through a partnership with a Greek company in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Between 1995 and 2018, movie ticket sales climbed globally. However, adjusting box office sales figures for inflation showed that cinemas were not delivering much growth — at least in terms of ticket revenues.

Cinemas have needed to rely on profits from the sales of snacks and beverages — often at inflated prices — and additional revenue from advertisements.

It may be difficult for some to believe, but there was a time when movie theatres did not have any pre-roll commercials.

In 2020 came the biggest blow to the industry in decades — the Covid-19 pandemic — with lockdowns that forced movie theatres to close their doors globally.

Like something out of a nightmare for cinemas, the lockdowns also saw major studios licensing movies for first release on-demand video streaming services.

While there was some recovery in movie ticket sales and box office numbers until 2023, the figures declined again in 2024. They are also nowhere near their pre-Covid levels.

Experts argue that cinemas can survive by continuing to adapt to the times and offering experiences that cannot be replicated at home — like shared live experiences in sports and music performances.

Plummeting prices of big-screen TVs with ever-improving technologies and affordable video streaming services have meant that the “unique” blockbuster cinema experience has largely evaporated.