Regal UA Circle Centre 9

dallasmovietheaters on March 19, 2025 at 5:11 am

The Regal UA Circle Centre was a destination location for the circuit amazingly able to serve out its 30-year lease in a dying downtown mall. The theatre was built as the futuristic United Artists Circle Centre Theatre 9 with Starport: A Virtual Theme Park. It debuted during the megaplex era of cinema exhibition blasting off September 8, 1995 in its intragalaxy mission whose operation never left Marion County. The venue was a prototype for the United Artists Theatre Circuit and served as a precursor of Family Destination Entertainment Centers (FEC) that would take root 20 years later in the exhibition industry. The circuit’s existing trademarked welcome of “Experience the Magic” greeted movie customers.

But this project was too costly and a bit before its time as that era’s VR gaming and motion simulator rides proved to be of fleeting interest in the 1990s. After a handful of UA Starport projects on the books were launched, UATC downgraded other planned locations to more traditional theaters with smaller non-branded Starport arcades. Some of those venues that were built had cavernous lobbies and other underused floor space with the footprints of the VR facilities removed abruptly from the final buildouts. UATC and ACT III Theatres were bought out just three years later by Regal Cinemas. They, in turn would declare bankruptcy in 2001 ensuring the Starport concept was permanently docked and the branding discontinued.

As it was reaching its 25th Anniversary, the venue - which had renamed as the Regal UA Circle Centre 9 in October 2008 - was closed on March 16, 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Circle Centre Mall had already plummeted to greyfield status, a term associated with a “dead mall.” The venue reopened on August 21, 2020 with UA/Regal parent Cineworld in its own bankruptcy, only to close again on October 8, 2020. The RUACC shockingly reopened on April 2, 2021, but the magic had faded. The theatre closed in film exhibition’s final stage within the streaming era on October 31, 2024 at the expiry of its lease. The entire mall was purchased with a dream of recreating it as on open-air courtyard operation that might open by the 2030s. The former Regal UA (née Starport) Circle Centre’s next destination was a hyperspace transportation to be ignited by explosives or with a more traditional wrecking ball.

The entry should be the Regal UA Circle Centre. Its history should obviously mention the pandemic - as should all of the theaters in this database IMHO - as that’s what forever altered the path of so many movie theaters of that era including the many that never reopened at all.

rivest266 on November 1, 2015 at 12:52 pm

September 8th, 1995 grand opening ad in photo section.