Kendall Square Cinemas has won approval to stay open until 2:30 a.m. Friday through Sunday, taking advantage of late-night weekend hours for the T and buses that began March 28.
It is the first expansion of hours in Cambridge tied explicitly to late-night transit hours, which are being tested by the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority for a year.
“With the T staying open later, I feel it would benefit us as well as our customers,” General Manager Howard Sandler told the License Commission on Tuesday.
In addition to adding more showings of films that could start at 11:30 p.m., midnight or even 12:15 a.m., the Landmark Cinemas location – which tends to show more highbrow and foreign fare – will be starting $8 screenings of quirky, older film “classics,” Sandler said.
The first movie in the late-night series will be “Clue,” the 1985 comedy murder-mystery famous for having three endings that varied by theater, Sandler said. It’s scheduled for May 16-17.
The series following that: “The Big Lebowski,” May 23-24; “Reservoir Dogs,” May 30-31; “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” June 6-7; “The Neverending Story,” June 13-14; “Back to the Future,” June 20-21; and “Alien: The Directors’s Cut” June 27-28.
The late-night showings are set to start in mid-May after Sandler confirms approval with the commission, although Tuesday its three members seemed unanimous in voting for the change, which also rolls the cinema’s hours of operation forward by an hour seven days a week, to 10 a.m. from 11 a.m. The location will keep closing at 1 a.m. Monday through Thursday.
No movie will be scheduled to start so late that ticket buyers would miss the last red line T or bus from Kendall Square, Sandler said.
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