Cinema Sunshine Matsudo

The Matsudo Sanrio Theater opened its doors as a single-screener in October 1980 on the first floor of the Urban Hill Matsudo building near the west exit of Matsudo Station on the Joban Line of the Japanese National Railways (now JR East) and the Shin-Keisei Electric Railway Shin-Keisei Line. At the time, there were five movie theaters including the oldest in the area known as the Kiryu Kaikan.

One of the longest running movies that ran at the Sanrio is “E.T.”, which according to Japanese film director Takeo Makamura, saw the movie eight times within a month or two in late-1982 and early-1983.

The original auditorium was renovated in 1988, and a second screen was added on site of a former restaurant entitled “Nutcracker”, named after the 1979 Japanese film of the same name also directed by Makamura. The original auditorium became Screen 2 while the former restaurant auditorium became Screen 1.

This didn’t last long, and in 1993, the theater moved nearby to the Urban Sogo Kaihatsu Building, and reopened as a triplex that same year when a third screen was officially added during relocation. That same exact year in 1993, a new three-screen theater named the Cinema Sunshine Matsudo opened right next to the Matsudo Sanrio Theater on March 13, 1993. The Urban Hill Matsudo, where the Matsudo Sanrio Theater once was located was demolished in the 1990s and a 22-story high-rise apartment building named the Park Sky Tower Matsudo was built on the site in November 2001.

A fourth screen was later added at the Matsudo Sanrio Theater, but unfortunately Sanrio closed the Matsudo Sanrio Theater on March 31, 2006. The Cinema Sunshine immediately took over the four screens and officially became a seven-screen multiplex under the Sasaki Kogyo chain.

This didn’t last long, and the theater officially closed for the final time on January 31, 2013, leaving Matsudo without a movie theater for six years and ten months until United Cinemas launched the United Cinema Terrace Mall Matsudo on October 25, 2019.

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