Star Cineplex
Client: Show Motion Limited
Cinema ERP rescue. Replacing a brittle legacy back-office with a modern Go-based ERP plus structured Oracle-to-PostgreSQL migration.
Definition
What is the Star Cineplex case study?
Star Cineplex is a LoneSock-built cinema ERP delivered for Show Motion Limited. It replaces a brittle legacy back-office (BBO, originally VB6 on Oracle, 220 forms across 12 modules and 22 halls of operational history) with a modern Go and Next.js ERP covering scheduling, box-office POS, F&B, settlement, and BI, alongside a structured Oracle to PostgreSQL data migration.
The Challenge
What we were solving for.
The cinema was running on a legacy back-office built in the 2010s on VB6 and Oracle, with 220 forms, 12 modules, and over a decade of operational history across 22 halls. It had been patched repeatedly and could no longer keep up with modern booking, scheduling, and F&B requirements.
Performance degraded during peak booking windows. Box-office workflows stalled on Friday evenings and major releases, and there was no coherent BI surface to drive decisions on scheduling, pricing, or concession mix.
Migration was as risky as the rewrite. Twelve-plus years of operational data on Oracle had to move to PostgreSQL without losing settlement integrity, audit trails, or the data the operator uses to make programming decisions.
What We Built
Technical architecture.
A cinema ERP on Go microservices: scheduling for complex multi-screen rotations, a box-office POS sized for intermission rushes, F&B inventory and ordering, loyalty and membership, and a BI analytics surface that crosses ticketing, concessions, scheduling, and demographics.
A scheduling engine that handles multi-screen venues, variable show lengths, cleaning intervals, screen-format constraints (IMAX, Dolby, standard), and advance booking windows. Managers build weekly schedules visually and the system validates against constraints before publishing.
Online ticketing with real-time seat maps, payment processing through SSLCommerz and bKash, QR-coded tickets, and contactless check-in. F&B supports pre-ordering from the seat with delivery to the auditorium.
A staged Oracle-to-PostgreSQL migration that runs alongside the build, so operational data continuity is established before the new ERP carries production traffic.
Key Numbers
Attributed, honest figures.
We publish numbers that the engagement supports. Unverifiable marketing metrics are not on this page.
Technology Stack
What we built it with.
Outcome
What the engagement delivered.
A modern cinema ERP with a coherent feature set, delivered with full source code and resale rights so the operator can license the platform onward.
Operational data from the legacy BBO system is brought into the new platform through a structured migration, preserving the historical record that the operator uses for business decisions.
Cross-domain BI surfaces show genre-by-concession patterns, prime-time behaviour, and venue mix, replacing the Excel and ad-hoc ChatGPT workflow the operator had been using.
Questions
FAQ for the Star Cineplex engagement.
What did LoneSock build for Star Cineplex?
LoneSock built a modern cinema ERP for Show Motion Limited covering scheduling, box-office POS, F&B, distributor settlement, loyalty, and BI, plus a staged Oracle-to-PostgreSQL migration of more than a decade of operational data from the legacy BBO system.
What tech stack was used?
Go microservices, Next.js 16 on the front-end, PostgreSQL 18 with Redis and RabbitMQ for hot paths, and SSLCommerz plus bKash for payments. The system is containerised for deployment.
What happens to the existing data?
The legacy Oracle data is migrated into PostgreSQL through a staged plan that preserves settlement integrity and audit trails. The migration runs in parallel with the build so operational continuity is established before production cutover.
Does the operator own the code?
Yes. The engagement delivers full source code with resale rights, so the operator can license the platform on to other cinemas.
How does this relate to the KiChole case study?
Star Cineplex is the cinema-side ERP, covering scheduling, POS, F&B, settlement, and BI. KiChole is the consumer-facing ticketing and discovery platform that connects to the ERP for sessions, seat maps, and booking. They are deliberately separate codebases with a Connect API between them.
Working on something similar
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$20/hr time and materials, fixed-price milestones, or retainer. Source code is yours.