Sony Pictures is in early talks to lease and operate the legendary Cinerama Dome theater in Hollywood. Variety has confirmed.

Sony has been actively moving into the exhibition business in recent years, acquiring the Alamo Drafthouse chain in 2024 for its Sony Pictures Experiences division and investing in Cosm shared reality experiences earlier this year.

Sony would operate the theaters under a lease agreement and would not be able to use the Arclight name, due to Chapter 7 proceedings, according to Deadline, which was first to report on the talks. Additionally, Alamo Drafthouse would likely participate in the operation of the complex.

The Culver City studio had no comment. Decurion Corp, the parent company of owners Robertson Property Group, owned by the Forman family, also had no comment.

Robertson Property Group has been carrying out renovations at the theater on and off over the past few years, but there is currently no planned opening date. In May, a liquor license renewal was approved at a municipal hearing, paving the way for reopening.

The closure of the Dome and Arclight cinemas in Hollywood has been painful for locals and industry creatives alike, leaving countless people baffled that the city’s power brokers haven’t found a way to open the doors again.

“Those theaters have been sitting idle for six years,” complained one top movie executive. Variety earlier this year at CinemaCon. “Imagine the mold.”

The Blue Note Jazz Club recently opened a Los Angeles location in the Dome complex, with 100- and 200-seat theaters.

Pacific Theatres, which later filed for bankruptcy, closed the ArcLight chain and the Cinerama Dome permanently a year after COVID shutdowns suspended movie theater operations. Although several of ArcLight’s locations were taken over by other operators, the Dome and ArcLight multiplex in Hollywood, which are wholly owned by Pacific’s parent company Decurion, have sat empty since.

The Cinerama Dome opened in 1963, originally as a showcase for the three-panel Cinerama process. Until its closure, it was one of the city’s highest-grossing multiplexes and a favorite stop for premieres and splashy events like a special preview screening of Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”

Los Angeles movie theaters have seen big changes since the pandemic. Landmark Theaters closed its Pico Boulevard location in 2022, and the Bruin and Fox theaters in Westwood Village closed in 2024. Fox was acquired by a consortium of filmmakers led by Jason Reitman, who is working on redeveloping the venue and opened it to screenings this summer ahead of redevelopment as Director’s Village.

— Matt Donnelly contributed to this report.