Paragon, Sun, Melody, Shanthi, Prarthana (drive-inn), Srinivasa, Jayanthi, Wellington and Anand were Chennai’s landmark large screen theatres. But, in the last two decades all these vanished to make way for either residential houses or commercial buildings. The latest to join the list is Udhayam in the heart of the city which closed on Saturday for conversion into residential flats.

There will hardly be any stand alone large screen theatre in Chennai in the next few years. Lack of space, growing demand for housing and poor revenue for theatre owners are major reasons driving this dramatic change, said sources.

R Paneerselvam, Proprietor of Rohini Silver Screens, Chennai, and General Secretary of Tamil Nadu Theatre and Multiplex Owners Association, said some of the theatres were converted to apartments or commercial building mainly due to high operational costs.

For instance, for a 500-700 seat theatre, the operational cost could be around ₹4 lakh a month with electricity being the highest. In and around Chennai, there are nearly 40 large screen theatres, he said.

Theatres with multiple screens and 200-300 seats can manage. If one film doesn’t do well in a screen, the other film may do well. However, this is not the case with a large single screen, he said.

Sreedhar Pillai, Entertainment Industry tracker, Columnist & Writer, said the conversion is a natural transition as it is becoming unviable to run a single screen due to poor patronage from the public and high cost of operations.

A few years ago, there were limited choices of entertainment and large theatres like Alankar and Ram used to have 1,000 plus seats and most of the shows were full. However, today there are many choices available for the public. The best return is for a small screen with 100-200 seat capacity, and this is catching up fast in Chennai, and other cities in Tamil Nadu. Movie lovers will not miss large theatres. They are adapting to other formats, including small screens and OTT, he said.

Siva Krishnan, Senior Managing Director (Chennai & Coimbatore), Head – Residential Services, India, JLL, on changing entertainment landscape in Chennai said with the rise of multiplexes, streaming services, and home entertainment systems, many single-screen theatres have faced declining attendance.

Land scarcity and escalating property values in urban areas are driving the need for redevelopment, making these projects more appealing to property developers and investors seeking to maximise returns on their investments.

In the past, Shanti Theatre was redeveloped as an office (named as Akshaya Shanti); Jayanti Theatre into a premium residential apartment (Olympia Jayanthi); Anand Theatre as an office (ETA Seethakathi Business Centre); Abirami Theatre for mixed use development; Prathana Drive Inn into a luxury villa project) and Srinivas Cinema as a residential apartment, he said.

The latest addition to the list is Udhayam Theatre,he added.

Ranjeeth Rathod, Managing Director, DRA, said theatres are now a dying trend with malls having cinema, and television and OTT catching up. However, since the old theatres like Udhayam, Motcham, Abhirami, Alankar and Maharani are prominent locations, on the main road where real estate value has gone up dramatically in the last two decades.

It makes sense to monetise such land as theatres no longer offer such revenue yield with competition . Also old theatres do not offer the experience like PVR and are becoming expensive compared to the comfort of OTT. Hence this shift in usage of property towards development, he said.