London’s Prince Charles Cinema signs a 25-year lease after a 21-month fight with its landlord
The Prince Charles Cinema is just off Leicester Square. Its landlord wanted the right to throw it out on six months’ notice. The cinema went to court, and 168,645 people signed a petition. On 15 October it said it had signed a 25-year lease without that clause.
16 October 2026
Photo: Matt Brown, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The cinema put the news on the white letter board over its door, ianVisits reported. It read YOU SAVED THE PCC. In a statement, the cinema said the new lease has no break clause and came after “21 months of uncertainty.”
Image: Prince Charles Cinema
What the landlord wanted
The landlord is Zedwell LSQ Ltd, part of Criterion Capital. Criterion is one of London’s biggest landlords, London Centric reported. The cinema went public with the dispute in January 2025.
It said the landlord wanted a break clause in the new lease. That would let the landlord evict the cinema on six months’ notice once it got planning permission to redevelop. The cinema said the rent was “far above market rates” too. It accused Criterion of trying to “bully us out of the building.”
The offices upstairs are being turned into a Zedwell hotel, London Centric reported. Ben Freedman, who owns the cinema, told London Centric the building works had made it close at times.
Photo: Prince Charles Cinema, via ianVisits
The fight
The dispute went to court. In August, Freedman told London Centric that almost nothing had changed since January 2025. He said the two sides had not spoken in all that time. “Our lawyers have a relationship with their lawyers,” he said.
It feels to us that every way possible there is to slow it down and make it more expensive is chosen.Ben Freedman, to London Centric, August 2026
He also said they had a good team and “a good war chest.” The actor Paul Mescal and the director Edgar Wright sent messages of support, London Centric reported.
More than 168,000 people signed a petition on 38 Degrees. In May 2025 the Soho Society asked Westminster Council to list the cinema as an Asset of Community Value, and the council did. The cinema said only five other places held that status at the time.
The cinema
The building went up in 1961 and 1962. It was named after the then Prince Charles and opened as a theatre. Judy Garland performed on its stage for The Jack Paar Program in 1964. Hellraiser had its world premiere there in 1987.
It has been a repertory cinema since 1991, showing old films next to new ones. The cinema says it shows more than 850 films a year on two screens. It gets no public money and has more than 250,000 customers a year.
Photo: Matt Brown, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Quentin Tarantino has called it “Mecca” for lovers of quality films. In 2007 Kevin Smith did a Q&A there and joked that they had named the bar after Tarantino and nothing after him. The next day staff screwed a framed picture of Smith to the first cubicle in the gents.
Photo: LavaLampBamboo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Matt Brown, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
15 October
The cinema’s statement thanked the 168,645 people who signed, the Soho Society, the council, the press and the film world. Its biggest thanks went to its staff, “who have kept things going without missing a beat.”
You have all placed your trust in us, and as we continue on for at least another 25 years, we promise to never forget that.The Prince Charles Cinema
Freedman sent London Centric a text to thank its readers. “The coverage we have received from you has been a key part of our journey,” he wrote.
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