The iconic, copper-fronted Nova building on Rundle Street will close on Thursday this week, but the nearby Cinema Place Palace Nova cinemas will be expanded.

Nova building owner Steve Maras told InDaily that when the Maras Group built it in 1996, its three cinema screens were “ample” for the business to operate fruitfully, but that now they were not.

Maras said there were plans to “open up” the Nova building next year.

But he would not reveal what would occupy the building in the future – other than to say the Maras Group would “do something very different with it”.

A Palace Nova spokesperson said work had begun to “expand to 12-screens and then continue to enhance their offering” at Cinema Place.

“The consolidation of the Palace Nova [East End cinemas] into the one site is a very good thing for the East End,” Maras said, adding that the Maras Group was constructing a new cinema complex on Prospect Road, with retail and food offerings on the ground floor, 14 cinema screens over two levels and an open-plan office on the top level.

Construction of the Prospect Road building was due complete by September 2017, he said.

The move will end that long-standing East End tradition – confusion about whether your movie is playing at Nova or Palace.