Sunrise Theater

The Sunrise is a renovated 1940’s theater in downtown Southern Pines that offers first-run and independent films, musical concerts, live broadcasts of the Met Opera, the Bolshoi Ballet in cinema, live community theater and other arts and entertainment. The Sunrise was built in 1898 as a hardware store, then later converted to a movie theater before it fell on hard times by the early 1980s. The Arts Council of Moore County and Sandhills Little Theater, in conjunction with The Pilot, rallied community support and restored the building as the Performing Arts Center. By 1998, the Arts Council transferred operations to the Sunrise Preservation Group, and then ownership of the theater building followed in 2005. The Sunrise Preservation Group has a mission to maintain and improve the Sunrise Theater and to ensure that it is used to enrich and enliven the entire community.