Michael McAdam believes in dreams - even if they are the very stuff of movies. In fact, especially if they are the stuff of movies.

For his own fascination with the silver screen — he was certainly the only Rathcoole teen  with a Super Eight cine recorder in 1973 — helped him dream beyond the peace walls and petrol bombs of seventies Belfast.

"Education didn't really do it for me," says Michael, who left school with a couple of CSEs. But what he lacked in academic certificates, he made up for with a work ethic inherited from his postman dad who would come home drenched mid-morning, his shift done, throw on a change of clothing and head out again to take on the run of faint-hearted (and dry) colleagues. 

Unlike most of his peers, he had his sights set higher than the shipyard or Shorts. What he did share with his teenage contemporaries was a fascination with TV and the silver screen. Unlike most, however, he decided early doors that he wanted to be part of that distant but alluring world of entertainment and films.  "I was always interested in being the guy in the projection room, the DJ, the person behind the scenes making things happen."

He got his start close to home. At the age of 15, school in his rearview mirror, he snagged a job in the Grove Theatre where projectionist Tommy McAllister encouraged him to chase his dreams. And while it wasn't the Warner Brothers lot in Hollywood, Ulster Television seemed to Michael like a good kicking off point. 

UTV, though had other ideas and rebuffed, repeatedly, the wannabe television studio apprentice. 

But, showing the persistence which would serve him well later in his business career, Michael spent four years hounding Ulster Television seeking a position — any position. Countless rebuffs and numerous failed interviews later, he finally took his dad's advice, wore a suit and tie to an interview — and was hired.

SELF-BELIEF: Michael McAdam at Yorkgate/Cityside in 2004
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SELF-BELIEF: Michael McAdam at Yorkgate/Cityside in 2004

Though enjoying a successful 25-year career behind the camera at UTV, Michael never quite gave up on his big-time movie dreams. 

In 1987, when on holiday in Portrush, he discovered a closed cinema and saw an opportunity to switch channels.

"I was peering through these doors, and one of the engineers who looked after the amusement machines said, 'are you interested in the cinema?' He organised for me to meet the owners. We took a walk around this closed-down cinema, popcorn containers, Coke containers, all on the floor from a night four and a half years before when it closed, I borrowed 100 quid from an aunt to stock the shop, and we opened the cinema on a handshake."

He may not have registered yet on the radar of Universal or 21st Century Fox (both on speed-dial today) but he was now part of the global movie business. "I just loved the idea of entertaining people," he explains. "I remember a family walking out of a screening, children looking up at their daddy saying, 'That was really great!' The buzz I got from providing that venue was incredible."

Glengormley Movie House followed - hitting the first year's projected profit in three months. Despite the reservations of many, Michael instinctively knew the new multiplex in a converted furniture store was a winner. "I would get up at one o'clock in the morning, drive to where the cinema currently is, and I would just walk about it and say, 'I'm right'. I'm walking around this empty warehouse at half one the morning and going, I know I'm right."

Yorkgate Movie House (now Cityside), on a North Belfast peaceline, followed in 1993, a year before the ceasefires which would transform Belfast. A born optimist, likely to credit luck rather than business acumen, for his successes, Michael never doubted the multi-screen cinema in a former mill would fly. 

The lack of a university education or a business school MBA never fazed Michael McAdam, perhaps because he always believed in himself - even when to fuel his Movie House expansion, he took on 13.5m in debt.  "I say this to my own kids: you've got to have a dream, you've got to have ambition, you've got to have push you've got to be able to pick yourself off the floor. You've got to believe in yourself. Because if you do not believe in yourself, then why should I?"

"I said, 'how much do you want', and she told me, and I said 'you'll take a bit less'. And she turned to me and she says, 'No, I will not, and it's worth every penny'."

Backing self-belief with ingenuity and determination kept the McAdam Movie House show on the road. 

When something seems impossible and others turn back, Michael keeps going. "I just keep finding another way, because there's always another way; around the back or in the side or over the roof, under the floor. And when you overcome the first hurdle, then all of a sudden people start to look at you in a different way."

MGM also opened on the Dublin Road in 1993, parking their mammoth tanks on the Movie House lawn. Undeterred, Michael faced them head-on eventually turning the tables, and ending up buying the cinema from then owners UCG in 2005. "I was at a trade show in Amsterdam and I sat beside a lady called Margaret Taylor, a Dublin lady, the managing director of what became UGC," explains Michael. "We had a few drinks in the bar. Well, actually, probably had quite a few drinks in the bar. And on the way out, I said to her, 'sell me your cinema in Belfast'. And she went, 'Yes, okay'.

"I said, 'how much do you want', and she told me, and I said 'you'll take a bit less'. And she turned to me and she says, 'No, I will not, and it's worth every penny'."

On his return to Belfast, Michael reached out to UCG and their property manager came up to the city. "We shook hands within an hour, and I took over that cinema," he recalls. 

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Investing heavily in Dublin Road, Michael breathed new life into the business, growing annual admissions from 400,000 to 650,000. 

By the late 2010s, Dublin Road was crying out for another major investment - at a time of increased competition with new multiplexes open at the Odyssey and in Lisburn - when a commercial agent approached Movie House with an offer to buy the property and site.

Negotiations, though, did not go smoothly. "We ended up all falling out, as you often do, and I decided it's not for sale. On the morning that it was agreed for sale, I had just ordered all the new carpets when my accountant friend Peter phoned me up and he said, 'it's gone'. And I said, 'What do you mean it's gone?' He says, 'it's gone'. And I says, 'who's bought it?' He says, 'I can't tell you at this stage'. And I says, 'and what's the price?' And the price was. £7.5m — and I wouldn't sell it for a penny less."

Did the famed McAdam luck play a part in delivering a deal just months before a once-in-a-century panedmic stopped the world in its tracks? 

Purchaser was publicly-listed Belfast company and global digital juggernaut Kainos. A few months after papers were signed, COVID smashed into Belfast and plans for a multi-storey office block at a time of working-from-home restrictions seemed unrealistic - and remained so post-crisis. Last year, Kainos revealed fresh plans for a smaller office block alongside accommodation for QUB students — all with their own dreams, some, undoubtedly, the stuff of movies.

Michael McAdam will be the next guest at the West Belfast Small Business Roundtable which will take place during Féile an Phobail on 5 August. Starting time is 8am. Tickets on Eventbrite. Use Voucher Code MOVIE for a 20 per cent Earlybird discount. This podcast is available on YouTube, see above, and on all podcast platforms including Spotify, above.