James Tutton from Moonlight Cinema
March 11th, 2008.
Our second event went really well, at Madame Brussels on Bourke St. When we migrated out to the back room to hear James Tutton speak the few people left out the front asked “Where did all the people go?” The medieval-style room justsqueezed the 68 of us in there, and I think everyone got a lot out of what James had to say about his experiences.
As a philosophy graduate, James Tutton was taking time off in New York after university and looking for commercial ideas to import to Australia when he went to watch an open-air movie in a Manhattan park. Inspired, he and his business partner Paul Chiodo launched Moonlight Cinema in Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens in 1996.
The following year they expanded to Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane. “The Moonlight audience is 18-35, tertiary-educated, a sophisticated urban audience,” says Tutton. Moonlight Cinema eventually sold to ASX-listed group Becker Entertainment in 2004 in a deal said to be worth about $8.3 million.
More recently James is turning his hand to property development with boutique property developer Neometro, who are best-known for the Luxe building on Inkerman Street in St Kilda, which won the Royal Australian Institute of Architects national award for commercial architecture in 2000.
“My focus in business has always been about working with brands.”
