Britain’s first ‘Art House Cinema’ Curzon Mayfair is set to close

“We have been forced to walk away from the beloved Curzon Mayfair. The message couldn’t be clearer,” wrote Curzon CEO Philip Knatchbull. “The plan to fundamentally alter the cinema is not wanted.”
13 May 2025

THE FAVOURITE BRITISH CINEMA OF STEVEN SPIELBERG HAS LITERALLY BEEN HIJACKED BY ACQUISITION

The Curzon Mayfair is an internationally renowned art house cinema, situated inside a Modernist would-be art gallery of unique artworks.

During its final weeks of existence, Curzon Mayfair still boasts its original 1966 intact interior, featuring pristine mural artworks, looking as bright as the day they were installed. The main 307-seater cinema features these wall-to-wall sculptures-as-murals, all conceived by the king of Modernity, the late William George Mitchell (1925–2020). They support a ceiling designed by the master of Op Art-meets-Pop Art, the Hungarian-French designer Victor Vasarely (1906–1997).

The original 1934 building was demolished in 1963 and rebuilt 59 years ago, in 1966, by H. G. Hammond for Sir John Burnet, Tait & Partners, architects, on its original site at the junction of Curzon Street and Hertford Street, Mayfair.

Feature films deemed worthy of “the big screen” are shown downstairs, while the more intimate screen experience is set inside the 65-seater cinema upstairs, housed within a vermilion-red room lit by white spherical table lamps. It could almost be a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. A prime example of 1960s interior style, it featured in period editions of Studio International magazine.

LEGACY

The list of films screened at Curzon set a standard that other cinemas tried to emulate. Among the notables: Marcel Ophuls’ La Ronde, which ran for an incredible 70 weeks in 1950, followed by Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief (1950), Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974), David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980), and James Ivory’s Howards End (1992). Merchant & Ivory films became mainstays over the years, as did the works of François Truffaut, Louis Malle, and Robert Altman.

In 2020, Curzon-distributed film Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite went global, becoming the highest-grossing foreign-language film at UK and Eire box offices. It won a BAFTA for Best Foreign Language Film and four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, becoming the first foreign-language film ever to do so.

A recent BFI London Film Festival favourite screened at Curzon Mayfair was Pablo Berger’s animated feature Robot Dreams (2023). In 2024, Curzon revived its catalogue of films acquired in 2006 from Artificial Eye, screening some of its 400-strong library. Most notably, films by Wim Wenders and Michael Haneke screened again this year. Current notables showing at Curzon Mayfair in December 2025 include Nuremberg and, in particular, BFI’s Palestine 36.

Curzon Mayfair was the inspiration for what became The National Film Theatre, which opened in 1957 as the NFT, now known as BFI Southbank, with four NFT cinemas showing films from around the globe.

FINAL DAYS

This 91-year-old cinema was the birthplace of Curzon Cinemas. It should have been Grade I listed, saved for the nation, tourism and moviegoers alike. Instead, it holds a Grade II Historic England listing. A Westminster Council accreditation granted it Asset of Community Value status in 2023, which remains registered until 2027. The Twentieth Century Society could have helped Curzon here too. Why not?

In 2017, Curzon CEO Philip Knatchbull won a BAFTA for Curzon’s Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema. In 2023, following a two-year court battle with the new freeholder-developer-landlord Fantasio, Curzon were told that if they lost they would be “liable for all of the court costs”, according to Knatchbull in spring 2025. Curzon subsequently withdrew their claim on the site. The Landlord and Tenant Act no longer appeared to be on the side of the leaseholder.

As former Animals singer-songwriter Alan Price sang in Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man! (1973):
“We all want justice, but you’ve gotta have the money to buy it.”

An investment of some £15 million, demanded by the landlord for a redeveloped Curzon Mayfair, was not only unnecessary, but far beyond Curzon’s means.

WHO ARE THE NEW OWNERS?

Who is Dan Zaum? Who are Fantasio? They are the new owners of Curzon Mayfair.

Zaum was behind the refurbishment of London’s famous music venue KOKO in Camden, formerly known as The Music Machine and The Camden Palace. KOKO now includes an adjoining hotel complex with a VIP balcony overlooking the venue.

An Israeli-born UK citizen and former lawyer, Zaum is the landlord of Curzon Mayfair. His company, formerly known as 38 Curzon Ltd, went through multiple incarnations linked to the address prior to Covid. Now rebranded as Fantasio, the company is registered at Companies House with links to the British Virgin Islands.

In March 2024, Zaum also became a director of a new UK film producer-financier, Gold Rush Pictures, founded in 2021 by Vladimir Zemtsov, a Russian-born Belgian oligarch. Zemtsov has producer credits on The Night in Lisbon, Club Zero (2023), and Unfinished Film (2024), all listed on IMDb with limited detail.

Zaum plans to reopen the refurbished Mayfair cinema in 2027 under Fantasio, rebranding the venue under a new name. He told the London Evening Standard in 2025 that he intended to offer a mixture of “arthouse” and “blockbuster” titles, “providing a platform for new filmmakers” while making the cinema more “immersive”.

CURZON MAYFAIR WILL CARRY ON INTO 2026

“Landlord Fantasio said its ambitious renovation plans were not yet ready to launch,” adding that “Fantasio will take over the building when they are ready to do so,” reported Screen Daily on 4 December. Meanwhile, Curzon Mayfair will continue operating at 38 Curzon Street, showing films on a rolling lease basis, seven days a week, into 2026.

Curzon Mayfair, the big-screen birthplace of international art house cinema, rolls on for now.

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