The Cinerama Dome reopening is scheduled for early 2028. Sony Pictures Entertainment and its cinema chain, Alamo Drafthouse, announced on 22 July 2026 that they will restore the 1963 concrete dome at 6360 Sunset Boulevard and the 14-screen former ArcLight Hollywood beside it. Renovation was due to start in August 2026, and the Dome keeps its name, its sign and its 86-foot-wide curved screen.
Key takeaways
- Dark since 2020. The Dome closed in March 2020, and its operator said in April 2021 that it would not reopen.
- Sony takes the lease. Sony Pictures signed a long-term lease for the Dome and the multiplex. Alamo Drafthouse, which Sony bought in 2024, will run them.
- The Dome stays a Dome. No dine-in service and no new name. The curved screen and large-format projection stay.
- The multiplex becomes Alamo's West Coast flagship, with dine-in screens, karaoke rooms, 35mm and 70mm projection.
- Reopening: early 2028.
What happened: Sony signs for the Dome
For six years the Dome sat behind fences on Sunset Boulevard. Pacific Theatres, which built it, closed the complex in March 2020. In April 2021 the chain said that none of its cinemas, ArcLight Hollywood included, would reopen. The Dome's owner then announced and pushed back reopening dates several times: late 2023, then 2024, then 2025. A Change.org petition to save it gathered more than 30,000 signatures.
On 22 July 2026, Sony Pictures Entertainment announced a long-term lease of the Dome and the former ArcLight complex, Commercial Observer reported. Tom Rothman, who chairs Sony's Motion Picture Group, put it plainly: "Hot damn! We're bringing the Dome back, baby."
The plan has two halves:
- The Dome keeps its curved-screen, large-format presentation and a traditional concession stand. It will have no dine-in service. It will show premieres, repertory programmes and special events.
- The multiplex next door becomes an Alamo Drafthouse with dine-in service, karaoke rooms and fan events. It keeps 35mm projection for archival prints and adds premium screens with 4K laser and 70mm projection, MyNewsLA reported.
Michael Kustermann, who heads Alamo Drafthouse, called the site "our new West Coast flagship".
Cinerama Dome architecture: a dome built like a kit
The Dome was designed for a format, and it shows. Cinerama projected a film across a deeply curved screen to fill the audience's peripheral vision. That made a wide, column-free room a requirement, not a choice.
Welton Becket and Associates' answer, led by designer Pierre Cabrol, was a geodesic dome. The Los Angeles Conservancy describes it as 316 interlocking concrete panels, pentagons and hexagons, bolted together with Buckminster Fuller's patented technique. The result rises over 70 feet, with no columns inside. The Conservancy calls it the first concrete geodesic dome in the world.
The kit was also about speed. According to Wikipedia's history of the building, construction took 16 weeks of round-the-clock work, and Cinerama hoped to roll the design out across the country. The Dome opened in 1963 with It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The country-wide rollout never came. The Hollywood Dome is the one that stayed.
The panels give the building its most recognisable feature: a white honeycomb you can read from a passing car on Sunset Boulevard. Below it, a flat canopy carries the red CINERAMA letters that Sony has promised to keep.
How the Dome survived the 1990s
This is not the first time the Dome has been rescued. In 1998 its owner proposed removing the plaza, the box offices and the marquee, cutting stadium seating into the floor and replacing the curved screen with a flat one. The Conservancy argued that the plan would fail federal rehabilitation standards. In December 1998, an agreement kept the historic exterior and interior, and the city made the Dome a Historic-Cultural Monument the same month.
In 2002 the Dome reopened as the centrepiece of ArcLight Hollywood, with its curved screen restored and a new sound system of 44 surround speakers. The multiplex built around it is the building Alamo now takes over.
Why the Cinerama Dome reopening matters
Most movie theatres are boxes, and you can show a film in any of them. The Dome is the reverse: a building shaped by one way of watching a film. Losing it would have meant losing a room that can't be rebuilt in a strip mall.
It also matters for Hollywood as a place. Los Angeles has been adding cultural buildings: the Colburn Center by Frank Gehry and the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art are new, but the Dome shows the other route: keep the landmark, change what happens around it. It is the same logic behind Alameda Brickworks, a speculative reuse project in this portfolio for a 1924 Arts District warehouse.
From the studio
I like this deal for one reason: the Dome stays a single, giant room. The easy business move would have been to carve it into smaller screens or bring in a dinner service. Instead, food goes next door and the dome keeps one job. In a building this singular, that restraint is the preservation.
What's next
- August 2026: renovation scheduled to begin on the Dome and the multiplex.
- 2026–2027: restoration of the Dome; conversion of the multiplex into an Alamo Drafthouse.
- Early 2028: the Dome and the Alamo Drafthouse reopen.
More stories from the city are in the Journal's Los Angeles tag and its News section.
FAQ
Is the Cinerama Dome open?
The Cinerama Dome is not open yet. It has been closed since March 2020, and Sony Pictures and Alamo Drafthouse plan to reopen it in early 2028 after a renovation scheduled to start in August 2026.
Who is reopening the Cinerama Dome?
Sony Pictures Entertainment holds a long-term lease on the Cinerama Dome and the former ArcLight Hollywood. Alamo Drafthouse, which Sony owns, will operate both.
Who designed the Cinerama Dome?
The Cinerama Dome was designed by Welton Becket and Associates, with Pierre Cabrol as lead designer. It is a geodesic dome of 316 concrete panels based on Buckminster Fuller's technique, and it opened in 1963.
Sources
- Sony, Alamo Drafthouse to Bring Hollywood's Cinerama Dome Back to LifeCommercial Observer
- Sony, Alamo Drafthouse Confirm Plans to Reopen Cinerama Dome, MultiplexMyNewsLA
- Cinerama DomeLos Angeles Conservancy
- Cinerama DomeWikipedia
