Nu Metro
South African cinema company
Nu Metro Cinemas is a South African cinema company. Its head office is in Dunkeld West, Gauteng.
Nu Metro's history dates to when the first Metro Theatre opened in Johannesburg in 1932. The oldest still-operating Nu Metro cineplex is Bedford, which opened in 1972. The company changed its name from Metro Theatres to Nu Metro Theatres in February, 1988, and then to Nu Metro Cinemas in 2008. Ownership of the company has changed hands multiple times over its 80-plus-year history. Most recently, it was owned by the Times Media Group until 31 December 2013, when it, together with wholly owned subsidiary Popcorn Digital Cinema Advertising, were sold to an independent consortium for R75 million.
The first film to feature digital audio at Nu Metro was Jurassic Park, in 1993, which played at Bedford Cinema 2 in DTS. Nu Metro's first DCP-compliant digital screen was Montecasino Cinema 11, which went live in December, 2006, with the animated movie Happy Feet. Night at the Museum was its first live action DCP-compliant digital movie. In 2009, Nu Metro Cinemas opened Africa's first all-digital cinema complex at Emperors Palace in Johannesburg.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Nu Metro” is south African cinema company. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Metro, South and African, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “south African cinema company” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7067740. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1932, 1972, 1988 and 2008.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Nu Metro”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Nu Metro primary sources, Nu Metro archive and Metro research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Nu Metro”?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Nu Metro” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.