With its comfy sofas and a menu of gourmet treats including Béarnaise smash burgers and trendy Whispering Angel rosé wine at £47 a bottle, Everyman has thrived as the go-to chain for a luxury cinema trip. Yet a quarter of a century after reinventing the movie-going experience, growing from a single venue in Hampstead in London to a national player with 49 sites, the arthouse chain finds itself struggling as rivals ape its successful formula.
Everyman issued a profit warning in early December, prompting rattled investors to wipe almost a fifth off its market value, and days later the company’s finance director disclosed that he was leaving. By the end of the month Alex Scrimgeour, the former boss of Côte restaurants who joined in 2021 tasked with leading a post-pandemic recovery, had resigned as chief executive with immediate effect – capping, in the assessment of one analyst, “a year to forget”.
While 2025 may have been Everyman’s annus horribilis, underlying issues have been mounting since Covid temporarily shut cinemas, with the company’s share price down almost 80% over the last five years as the sector also dealt with Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes and an uneven pipeline of hits. David Hancock, the chief analyst for media and entertainment at the research company Omdia, said: “Somewhere along the way Everyman lost its edge.
I don’t think it is just about the challenges faced by all the players in the market. “Everyman set the bar in the premium market and they became the one that everyone else was shooting at.
Big rivals like Odeon and Vue have launched concepts based in premium. There is more competition than ever before.” Everyman has run up more than £56m in pre-tax losses over the past six years and has not made a pre-tax profit since 2019, while debt has continued to mount.