Off the corner of Sunset and Vine in Hollywood, a movie theater that was once the film industry’s favorite gathering spot remains in a state of limbo.
The Cinerama Dome opened in 1963 and later became a popular spot for cinephiles under the ownership of Arclight Cinemas, but it has remained boarded up since the pandemic, a period that drove Arclight out of business and forced it to sell nearly all of its former cineplexes to new owners. All that remains is the Cinerama Dome and its adjacent multiplex, which Arclight’s parent company, Decurion, previously teased would eventually reopen.
But those reopening plans were pushed back to 2024 … then to 2025. And this past spring, a grassroots fan group called Save Arclight claimed that a planned $20 million renovation of the historic theater had been quietly canceled. While recent developments of the complex surrounding the Dome have kept hopes alive that Decurion might try again in the future, multiple theater and studio insiders told TheWrap that they doubt the Cinerama Dome will reopen anytime soon, citing the exorbitant costs and increasingly challenging market that the Dome faces.
It’s a grim and uncertain fate for a Los Angeles treasure that had experienced a 21st century rebirth as a gathering for film enthusiasts. It’s also a microcosm of a movie theater industry diminished by economic and cultural headwinds such as rising costs and the wider availability of streaming content.
Hollywood, meanwhile, has moved on. The industry screenings and premieres the Dome once hosted have moved to other locations like the nearby Chinese Theatre, while the AMC locations at The Grove, Burbank and Century City have replaced it as the launch pad for specialty films and Oscar hopefuls’ limited releases. Back in 2021, TheWrap reported that the Cinerama Dome’s decline had begun even before the pandemic, with annual ticket grosses sliding nearly 15% from 2017 to 2019.
Yet the Cinerama Dome carries a special place in the hearts of many Angeleno cinephiles. It was a place where filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Jon M. Chu and Christopher Nolan regularly showed up to see films. It became known as the theater where Academy voters often saw the movies they would later vote to win the Best Picture Oscar.
A movie palace for the 21st century
The boon in the early 2000s was quite a resurgence for the theater that was years in the making. While Cinerama is best known among cinephiles as an immersive three-projector film format introduced in the 1950s, the Cinerama Dome opened in 1963 with a reimagined single-projector 70mm Cinerama format that debuted with the comedy “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.” It wasn’t until 2002, when Arclight first launched with the Hollywood multiplex, that the Dome screened classic films with the original three-projector Cinerama reels.
Arclight sold that capability as part of the multiplex’s appeal: offering locals and tourists alike a chance to see films in a classic Hollywood movie palace. This happened at a time in the early 2000s when various business interests were trying to turn Hollywood – the neighborhood, not the industry – back into a tourist hotspot befitting what visitors might imagine the global filmmaking capital to be.
That plan didn’t pan out, according to Larry Vincent, a professor of marketing at USC’s Marshall School of Business and former chief branding officer at United Talent Agency. But he points to the Cinerama Dome as one of the few success stories of that campaign, because it sold authenticity to the public.
“You can’t really replicate that sense of history that you get when you visit the Egyptian Theater or Musso & Frank’s,” Vincent said. “Arclight sold the Cinerama Dome as a special place where people could see new and classic films in a unique movie palace that visitors would seek out and which residents would want to come back to.”
Over 17 years, the Arclight Hollywood became an anchor business for the Sunset/Vine area, enjoying turnout from curious tourists as well as Hollywood creatives and execs who attended industry advance screenings or were just trying to finish their Oscar watch list. For those not in the industry but who loved film more than anything else, or even just nearby residents, seeing a new movie beneath the Dome’s geodesic roof was a common weekend outing, often accompanied before or after by a trip next door to Amoeba Records to pick up a new Blu-ray or DVD of a classic.
For the last five years, that hotspot has gone dormant. Along with Arclight’s demise, Amoeba Records moved a few blocks northeast to Hollywood Boulevard next to the Pantages and Fonda Theatres, leaving behind a complex around the Cinerama Dome that has included a Veggie Grill franchise, a gym and a half dozen hair salons. It was only this August that an attempt was made to revive the Dome complex as an entertainment spot with the Blue Note jazz club, known for its flagship location in New York, opening its L.A. location next to the theater.
Vincent said the Blue Note is a start, but it won’t bring the foot traffic that Arclight and Amoeba once did.
“Without multiple anchor businesses that offer more things to do at different prices, that level of business we saw a decade ago won’t come back,” he said.
A real fixer-upper
Whether the Blue Note is part of a larger plan to revitalize the area that could include reopening the Dome, either on its own or with the adjacent Arclight multiplex, remains a mystery to four movie theater industry executives who spoke to TheWrap anonymously. All four confirmed that multiple offers had been made to Arclight’s parent company and Cinerama Dome owners, the Decurion Corporation, to acquire or lease the Dome and/or the Arclight Hollywood when the chain’s other locations went up on the market.
But the insiders say that Decurion and its commercial real estate agency Robertson Properties Group have told exhibitors that the Dome itself is not for sale, and a long-term lease for the multiplex has not been offered. Decurion is owned by Chris Forman, son of Pacific Theaters founder William Forman, who first built the Cinerama Dome.
Decurion and Robertson did not respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
One executive of a major film chain told TheWrap that while the Dome’s enduring popularity with locals and industry workers alike will always leave the possibility of its reopening on the table, he’s less sanguine about the multiplex. He said that with each passing year that goes by without refurbishments, the cost of reopening Arclight Hollywood will continue to go up.
“Most likely, nothing in that complex has been touched. HVACs, concessions equipment, projectors,” the executive said. “And without the security of a long-term lease, no chain will want to take on the costs of upgrading all of that.”
Such upgrades have been on the minds of many in the movie theater business lately. Last year, trade org Cinema United announced that eight major chains, including AMC, Regal, Cinemark and Marcus Theaters, had pledged a combined $2.2 billion worth of investments in multiplex refurbishments.
In a concerted, industry-wide effort to counter the reputation among many moviegoers that theaters offer a poor experience that’s not worth the money, chains are looking to make reclining seats industry standard, update and expand their concessions menus, increase the number of premium format auditoriums available and improve the baseline sound and picture for standard auditoriums. Reopening the Dome and Arclight Hollywood would require doing all of these things to a theater that last opened its doors in March 2020.
But refurbishing a theater can bring more costs than just those updates. Major renovations often come with required safety and health inspections that can lead to additional costs to stay up to code. One CEO of a top chain told TheWrap that one of its locations did not pass its initial safety inspection due to outdated fire alarms, which added more than $20,000 to the cost of the refurbishment.
“With how long the Arclight Hollywood has been closed, I would expect a lot of those extra costs to stay up to code,” he said. “We don’t know because no one’s been inside, but think about things like escalators, elevators for ADA compliance, maybe the sprinkler systems. All that could add to the cost.”
In addition to those issues, there’s one specific to the Dome itself that isn’t necessary for its reopening, but could determine what sort of special screenings it could host should it ever reopen: its projector room. One anonymous film distribution exec who regularly booked new films at the Dome when Arclight was operating said that some filmmakers complained that the Dome’s screen was not properly aligned with the projector to show films in 70mm.
The prominence of the 70mm format has grown in recent years thanks to filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and Ryan Coogler, who have actively promoted screenings of works like “Oppenheimer” and “Sinners” using the format. In an unheard-of move, a small handful of theaters who will be screening Nolan’s next film, “The Odyssey,” on Imax 70mm made tickets to those screenings available a year in advance, with several locations selling out all of their screenings for the format on July 17, 2026.
In a hypothetical situation where the Dome reopens, the chance to see films in 70mm in the Dome would be a feast for hardcore movie buffs. But the distributor said that at least one prominent filmmaker asked the exec’s studio to screen his film in a standard digital format in the Dome even when 70mm prints were made.
A changed marketplace
Going that far for the most devoted moviegoers is optional. What isn’t a choice is grappling with the radically changed box office. Arclight built its reputation in the 2000s and 2010s as a hybrid between an arthouse chain and a major chain, becoming a place where Chloé Zhao’s “The Rider” got a dedicated screen even as the rest of the cineplex was devoted to the opening weekend of “Avengers: Infinity War.” Oscar winners like “Moonlight” and “Parasite” could play at those theaters for weeks, sometimes even months.
The demise of the 90-day theatrical window has brought an end to that. Awards contenders released in October and November are often available on premium on-demand and streaming by the time they get their nominations in January. Last year’s Best Picture winner, “Anora,” bucked this trend with a 70-day theatrical window courtesy of its distributor, Neon, but still grossed just $20.4 million at the North American box office and needed post-theatrical revenue to turn a profit.
While theater chains and independent theaters who weathered the pandemic have adjusted to a diminished box office over the past five years thanks to tailored marketing, loyalty programs and expanded food and beverage menus, the costs of having to completely renovate and maintain a historic theater and a 16-screen multiplex in a competitive L.A. exhibition market and with domestic grosses still roughly a quarter down from pre-pandemic levels even before inflation may be too much for Decurion to take on.
Not all hope is lost. At a Los Angeles zoning hearing for the opening of the Blue Note, a land use consultant for the project told local officials that Decurion and Robertson Properties Group had reached out about potential plans to reopen the Dome, saying that the companies’ goal was to “restore the entire property.” But details about those potential plans were not disclosed.
In 2026 and beyond, theater owners are still holding onto hope that studios will make good on their promises both publicly and in private meetings to restore the number of wide release films from the 78 currently scheduled for 2025 to the 95-100 seen in the late 2010s. Paramount has made commitments to increase its output under Skydance’s new ownership, while Amazon MGM will start releasing 12-14 wide releases annually starting next year.
Whether that will be enough to lift the box office to the point that a Cinerama Dome reopening becomes financially viable is known only to Decurion.
