The curtain is about to go up!
Movie buffs at Nitehawk Cinema on Thursday announced they will open the Pavilion Theater they’ve been restoring for years to the public on Dec. 19 — three days after they host members of a Park Slope civic group at a private screening on Dec. 16.
Cinema brass shared the official opening date for theater, now called Nitehawk Prospect Park, via a Facebook post days after telling this reporter it would “open very soon” when he reached out for comment about the invitation-only Sunday screening of “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” for members of the Slope’s 14th Street Block Association.
Nithawk’s chief film buff Matthew Viragh in 2016 leased the landmarked theater — which opened as the Sanders Theater back in 1928, and sits within the protected Park Slope Historic District Extension — from a group of investors, which bought it from developer Hidrock Properties for $28 million after that builder dropped a plan to convert the site into a condo building with space for a smaller movie house.
Viragh closed the cinema in late 2016 before kicking off its renovation, with plans to open it roughly a year later.
Delays in construction, however — including workers’ discovery of such ancient features as balconies dating back to the Pavilion’s early days — forced Nitehawk bigwigs to postpone the theater’s debut until this winter, and cancel what was supposed to be the spot’s first screening this past November.
But now, locals who have patiently waited to peek inside the made over movie house — which allegedly suffered a blockbuster bed-bug infestation years before Viragh took it over — have just days to wait before they can grab a beer, watch a flick, and check out its renovation under the cinema’s new Williamsburg-based operator.
