---
title: "The Cinerama Dome will reopen in 2028 under Alamo Drafthouse"
description: "The geodesic Hollywood landmark, dark since April 2021, will reopen in early 2028 run by Alamo Drafthouse, now owned by Sony. The dome's exterior and its 70mm projection stay; the adjacent former ArcLight complex reopens too. For a city that watched the pandemic close its most distinctive movie house, a date is the news."
category: "Los Angeles"
category_url: https://herald.la/category/los-angeles
author: "Julian Mercado"
published: 2026-07-23T01:48:00.000Z
updated: 2026-07-23T01:48:00.000Z
canonical: https://herald.la/article/the-cinerama-dome-will-reopen-in-2028-under-alamo-drafthouse
tags: ["cinerama-dome", "hollywood", "movie-theaters", "arclight", "los-angeles"]
---
# The Cinerama Dome will reopen in 2028 under Alamo Drafthouse

The geodesic Hollywood landmark, dark since April 2021, will reopen in early 2028 run by Alamo Drafthouse, now owned by Sony. The dome's exterior and its 70mm projection stay; the adjacent former ArcLight complex reopens too. For a city that watched the pandemic close its most distinctive movie house, a date is the news.

One of the more painful pandemic closures in Los Angeles has an end date. The Cinerama Dome, the geodesic Hollywood theater that has sat dark since 2021, will reopen in early 2028 under the Alamo Drafthouse chain, [ABC7 reports](https://abc7.com/post/cinerama-dome-iconic-hollywood-theater-shuttered-covid-pandemic-will-reopen/19559141/).

## What is happening

The Dome will be operated by Alamo Drafthouse, the cinema chain now owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment. The plan preserves what makes the building itself famous: the distinctive 86-foot geodesic dome and its logo stay, and the theater will keep the capacity for 70mm projection, the large-format film that repertory audiences prize.

One departure from the Alamo Drafthouse norm: the Dome itself will not have the chain's signature in-theater dining. That is reserved for the adjacent 14-screen complex, the former ArcLight Cinemas, which will also reopen and will offer the food-and-a-movie format. In effect, the Dome stays a purist's single-screen showcase while the complex next door becomes the full Alamo experience.

## Why this one matters

Plenty of theaters closed during the pandemic, and this is one announcement among many about the slow, uneven recovery of moviegoing. But the Cinerama Dome is not just any screen. It opened in 1963, commissioned by Pacific Theatres founder William R. Forman and built for the three-projector Cinerama process that curved an image across an enormous screen. For sixty years it was where Los Angeles saw the movies it wanted to see big.

Its closure in April 2021, along with the ArcLight chain it anchored, hit the film community harder than the average shuttering precisely because of what it represented. Sony's chief executive, Ravi Ahuja, reached for that affection in announcing the reopening: "There is no moviegoing destination anywhere in the world that commands the affection, history, and cultural significance of the Cinerama Dome." Alamo's chief executive, Michael Kustermann, called it the chain's "new West Coast flagship."

## The honest caveat

The date is 2028, not tomorrow, and announcements of reopenings are easier to make than to deliver, particularly for a historic building that needs to be brought up to modern standards. So the appropriate register is optimism with a wait-and-see attached.

Still, for a landmark whose going-dark became a symbol of what the pandemic did to a film town, the meaningful thing is that the plan is specific: a named operator, a preserved dome, 70mm intact, and a year. Michael O'Leary, president of the trade group Cinema United, called the Dome "a treasured and important landmark for movie fans and the entire film community for over six decades." In early 2028, if the plan holds, that landmark turns its projectors back on. The Herald will report the reopening when it happens, and hold the date to account if it slips.

## Sources

- [Cinerama Dome, iconic Hollywood theater shuttered by COVID pandemic, will reopen](https://abc7.com/post/cinerama-dome-iconic-hollywood-theater-shuttered-covid-pandemic-will-reopen/19559141/)