On her first filmed date, British YouTuber Amelia Dimoldenberg met a grime rapper in a Chicken Cottage chicken shop. In twelve years the format of her show Chicken Shop Date has barely changed, but its status has, writes Jordan Schwarzenberger, who sees this as a litmus test of how much more space the creator economy takes up today. Cinemas will screen the entire final series on Tuesday 24 November, while the finale is not out on YouTube until Friday 27 November.
According to Schwarzenberger, co-founder of the company Arcade, one-night-only cinema screenings like this used to belong to Hollywood and TV, and creators were invited to premieres only as viewers, “if they promised to post copiously about it on their socials”. The YouTuber’s as yet unreleased finale will now run for a single evening in ten cinemas in Britain, Ireland and Paris, together with the other episodes of the final series and additional new material. The venues range from London’s Curzon Soho to mk2 Bibliothèque in Paris.
For the Vue cinema chain, this follows a year in which films by YouTubers succeeded in cinemas, says Johnny Carr, who heads event screenings at Vue. The show also brings an audience that, according to Schwarzenberger, comes back every week, with a loyalty most traditional broadcasters now miss. And the deadpan dates in chicken shops are reaching the big screen for the very first time.
From chicken shop to big screen
The show has been filmed in local chicken shops since 2014, and 115 episodes were made there before the final series began. It rests on the host’s British humour and her flirting with guests. At first Dimoldenberg invited mainly British rappers to the chicken shops, later stars such as Paul McCartney. By her own account, she released the first episode herself.
She has been releasing the final series since 2 October on the same day and at the same hour on both YouTube and Netflix. According to Variety, licensing the show is part of Netflix’s effort to break into the creator business and compete with YouTube.
YouTube itself is also taking creators to cinemas. The French group mk2 created the YouTube Ciné-Club label with it so that YouTube shows could get preview screenings in cinemas and audiences could watch them together on the big screen. Through the label, cinemas in France and other countries screened the first episode of YouTuber Michou’s show Terminal on 5 September 2025, two days before its release on YouTube. The Chicken Shop Date screenings run in partnership with the same label.
A farewell ticket
The screening is a farewell to the show. Dimoldenberg announced its end on Instagram in September this year, recalling how at seventeen it occurred to her that she might meet the love of her life on a date in a chicken shop. In the film the cinemas will show, the last dates alternate with moments in which she tries to say goodbye to the show, and it also includes behind-the-scenes footage. She calls it the last chance to experience the show together on the big screen. According to her, the film will take viewers through her decision to end the show.
The decision to end it turned the screening into an event with a date, wrote Faraz Ali, one of the commenters under Schwarzenberger’s post. “Creators almost never finish things, they just fade and you can't sell tickets to a fade.” Tickets for the farewell to the chicken shop show are on sale.
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