EXCLUSIVE: There’s some serious buzz in town that Sony is about to resuscitate the Cinerama Dome and Hollywood Arclight multiplex, which has been shuttered since Covid it in 2020. The Culver City lot is in talks, we hear, with the Robertson Property Group on a lease to reopen the historic cinema venue.
Details are still being worked out, in addition to a reopening date.
Sources also are under the impression that the Sony-owned dine-in theater chain Alamo Drafthouse would play a role in the resurrection of the Cinerama Dome and Hollywood Arclight.
If Sony can close this deal and put its muscle into remodeling it and bringing it up to 2026 speed, it would come as a big blood infusion to what is already a booming box office, with this year’s domestic haul already the best since 2019 with $5.4B through this past Sunday. The Cinerama Dome and Hollywood Arclight pre-Covid was one of the 10 highest-grossing multiplexes in any given weekend. The Arclight alone was a vital place to launch independent and arthouse films, providing them a launch pad and profile during awards season, as well as hefty ticket sales. Quite often, the Arclight was part of the opening limited suite for awards movies from Searchlight, A24, Weinstein Co., etc.
The property, located at 6360 Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, formerly was operated by Pacific Theatres and Arclight. The Cinerama Dome and Hollywood Arclight was set to reopen in May 2021 for Paramount’s A Quiet Place Part II and Disney’s Cruella. But the Forman family-owned umbrella group, Decurion, which held Arclight Cinemas and Pacific, as well as Robertson Property Group, fell under financial distress due to Covid and was forced to enter Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Several Arclights across the country were closed and rescued by other exhibitors, i.e. Regal took over the Sherman Oaks Galleria and the Arclight Pasadena, while Amazon took on the Arclight Culver City. AMC took over a few leases including Pacific’s The Grove and Glendale American sites.
We have heard for some time that the Forman family was taking secret meetings with exhibitors and studios for a new operator of the Cinerama Dome and Hollywood Arclight. AMC and Amazon MGM Studios are among those who we know who kicked the tires and passed. We understand the Forman family would like to continue owning the crown-jewel cinema venue. We also understand that due to the Chapter 7 proceedings, the Arclight name cannot be used in any future iterations of the property.
Pacific Theatres founder William R. Forman announced the construction of the Cinerama Dome in July 1963 at a star-studded groundbreaking ceremony attended by Spencer Tracy, Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Edie Adams and Dorothy Provine. Forman had committed to United Artists that the Dome would be ready for the November 7, 1963, world premiere of the first movie filmed in the new 70mm, single-strip Cinerama process: Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World. Construction was rapid, taking only 16 weeks.
Before the pandemic hit, the Cinerama Dome had a starry cameo in Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar-winning, Sony-distributed 2019 feature Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
The Cinerama Dome is the only concrete geodesic dome on Earth. The theater is made up of 316 individual hexagonal and pentagonal shapes in 16 different sizes. Each of these pieces is roughly 12 feet across and weighs around 7,500 pounds.
The Arclight Cinemas multiplex opened in 2002 with 15 screens that featured stadium seating. The venue was ahead of its time in regard to the placement of seats: Its front-row seats were a located a distance from the screen at an eye-level for moviegoers, with no strain on the neck.
Soon after Sony vacated its bid for Paramount Pictures in the summer 2024, it snapped up the Austin-based Alamo Drafthouse chain known for his cinephile programming, deluxe wine and beer and comfort-food menu, and their Fantastic Fest genre film festival.
Sony did not respond to a request for comment.