About UK Cinema API

UK Cinema API is an independent project. I'm Karl Entwistle, a software developer based in Bristol, and I build and run it myself.

It started with a simple frustration: finding out when an older film is showing at a cinema near you shouldn't be so difficult.

How it started

In January 2021 I tweeted:

I’d love to find a website where I could subscribe to an alert anytime certain old movies are playing. I’d love to watch The Matrix and pretty much any Tarantino or Kubrick movie on the big screen.

— Karl Entwistle (@karlentwistle) January 14, 2021

Nothing like that existed, so later that year I built Film Chase. It collects cinema listings, works out which film each showing is, and tells you when a film you're waiting for is on near you.

Collecting the listings turned out to be most of the work. Every cinema chain and independent publishes its programme differently, and no single source covers them all. I realised the data could be useful to other developers, who would otherwise have to collect it themselves.

So in 2024 I opened up the infrastructure behind Film Chase as UK Cinema API. The two still run on the same data.

What it does today

• Showtimes from 1,022 cinemas, 819 in the UK and 83 in Ireland, from the big chains to single-screen independents.
• Listings are collected from each cinema's own website or booking system, most of them every night.
• Showtimes are standardised across cinemas, so the data has the same structure regardless of its source. Films are matched to TMDB records, including IMDb IDs where available, and checked before publication.
• Each showtime has a booking link where the cinema gives one. Pro and Ultra add formats and accessibility details such as subtitles, audio description and relaxed screenings, and ticket pricing is available on Ultra, where cinemas publish their prices. Past showtimes are free in the archive.