Hollywood’s Cinerama Dome and Arclight plex has been closed since 2020…killed by the pandemic. And no one has come to the rescue.
No rich passionate filmmaker has come along to save the day, turning the Cinerama Dome into a film buff’s haven, more or less in the way Tarantino runs the New Beverly and Vista.
And yet the wealthy but ugly guy who owns the Dome, Decurion Corp.’s Chris Forman, hasn’t sold it to some ruthless, thick-fingered developer who might turn the place into a shopping mall of some sort.
No studio has bought it in the fashion of Disney’s ownership of the El Capitan or how Netflix owning the Egyptian Theatre.
And it hasn’t turned into the Alex Theatre in Glendale, which is still around but doesn’t function like a “regular theater” and is basically a giant museum piece much of the time.
Decurion won’t re-open the Dome/Arclight because Forman knows it’ll lose money. Somebody with tons of dough has to step in and re-open it with the understanding that the operation will lose money, but that it will earn at least some reasonable amount on a monthly basis.
The only solution is that the city of Los Angeles has to step in and offer bountiful tax incentives to a possible rescuer, incentives that will at least allow the new owner to break even. Allowing the Dome to just sit there and collect dust is bad for the soul of Los Angeles….bad for the culture, for the joie de vivre of movie lovers, bad for the spirit of things, bad for the political climate.
I still say that the ultra-curved Cinerama Dome screen distorts the shit out of Scope films (2.39:1). The screen needs to be modified into a slightly curved shape.
I remember seeing Deliverance at the Dome way back when….loved the directional sound.
