Westwood’s historic movie palaces, the Regency Village Theatre and the Bruin, are closing later this week.
“The last day of operation for the Bruin & Village Theaters under Regency is Thursday, July 25,” Lyndon Golin, Regency Theatres president, confirmed in an email Sunday.
Regency has managed the two theaters for 14 years, but its leases for the properties end later this month, Golin added.
A beloved landmark, the Village Theatre is expected to close only temporarily, thanks to a high-profile effort by director Jason Reitman and others to save the once stately 170-foot white Spanish Revival-Art Deco “wedding cake” tower that has beckoned Westside moviegoers since 1931. The group announced in late February that its acquisition of the theater had closed but it did not disclose a timetable for renovations or say when the Village might be ready for a grand re-opening.
The fate of the nearby Bruin, which opened in 1937, remains unclear; it was not purchased along with its more showy sibling.
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“The [Bruin’s] owners thank the Golin Family and Regency Theaters for our relationship with them for the last 14 years,” the family said in a statement, provided by a representative. The owners said they are “currently evaluating future opportunities for the Bruin.”
Long known as the Fox Westwood Village, the theater was designated a historic cultural monument in 1988.
Famously used as a location in Quentin Tarantino’s 1960s-set “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” the venue, designed by Percy P. Lewis, originally was part of the Fox theater chain. In the 1970s, it became part of the Mann Theatres chain.
The theater went on the market last year. After learning the news, Reitman raced to stitch together a group of filmmakers to purchase the venue before it could be turned into a retail shop or another business serving the nearby UCLA community.
Plans include gussying up the Village — which has a 70mm-capable screen, an upgraded sound system and a cavernous auditorium that can seat more than 1,300 people — to eventually screen a mixture of first-run films and repertory programming, the new owners have said.
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“We have an exciting vision that includes dining, drinking, moviegoing, gallery viewing and programming of new and old films, and we cannot wait to share that with everybody,” Reitman said in a February interview with The Times.
Representatives of Reitman‘s group did not respond to queries Sunday for additional details.
The ticket booth at the Regency Bruin theater in Westwood Village boarded up in 2020, during the COVID-19 shutdown.
(Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)
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The effort to save the Village Theatre on Broxton Avenue came as movie houses in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the country were struggling to stay afloat following the devastating one-two punch of COVID-19 pandemic-related closures and last year’s strikes by Hollywood writers and actors.
The film pipeline has been slow to return, hampering the comeback hopes of many movie theater operators.
Some did not survive the pandemic, including the ArcLight Cinemas chain, with six locations in the Los Angeles area, and the Landmark Theatres’ location at Westside Pavillion.
Still, there have been flickers of a rebound with the success of recent Hollywood blockbusters, including this weekend’s “Twisters,” from Universal Pictures, which racked up more than $80 million in domestic ticket sales in its debut. Disney/Pixar’s “Inside Out 2,” also has soared, generating an estimated $1.4 billion in global sales since its June opening.
Others have shown faith in the independent moviegoing scene. Four years ago, Netflix purchased the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood; filmmaker Tarantino bought the historic Vista Theater in Los Feliz in 2021; and Sony Pictures Entertainment last month assumed control of the Texas-based Alamo Drafthouse Cinema chain, including its location in downtown L.A.
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Reitman’s group includes a dizzying array of Oscar-winning filmmakers and other talent, including Christopher Nolan, J.J. Abrams, Guillermo del Toro, Christopher McQuarrie, Judd Apatow, Damien Chazelle, Steven Spielberg, Chris Columbus, Bradley Cooper, Alfonso Cuarón, Hannah Fidell, Alejandro González Iñárritu, James Gunn and Rian Johnson. Other announced members of the ownership group include Gil Kenan, Karyn Kusama, Justin Lin, Phil Lord, David Lowery, Chris Miller, Todd Phillips, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Jay Roach, Seth Rogen, Emma Seligman, Emma Thomas, Denis Villeneuve, Lulu Wang and Chloé Zhao.
Through Thursday, “Twisters” is playing at the Bruin, and “Fly Me to the Moon” is screening at the Village, according to Regency’s website. Regency Theatres operates 20 locations, primarily in Southern California.
This is a developing story.
Staff writer Josh Rottenberg contributed to this report.
Forget the “video game movie” curse;The Mortuary Assistantis a bone-chilling triumph that stands entirely on its own two feet. Starring Willa Holland (Arrow) as Rebecca Owens, the film follows a newly certified mortician whose “overtime shift” quickly devolves into a grueling battle for her soul.
What Makes It Work
The film expertly balances the stomach-churning procedural work of embalming with a spiraling demonic nightmare. Alongside a mysterious mentor played by Paul Sparks (Boardwalk Empire), Rebecca is forced to confront both ancient evils and her own buried traumas. And boy, does she have a lot of them.
Thanks to a full-scale, practical River Fields Mortuary set, the film drips with realism, like you can almost smell the rot and bloat of the bodies through the screen.
The skin effects are hauntingly accurate. The way the flesh moves during surgical scenes is so visceral. I’ve seen a lot of flesh wounds in horror films and in real life, and the bodies, skin, and organs. The Mortuary Assistant (especially in the opening scene) looks so real that I skipped supper after watching it. And that’s saying something. Your girl likes to eat.
Co-written by the game’s creator, Brian Clarke, the movie dives deeper into the demonic mythology. Whether you’ve seen every ending or don’t know a scalpel from a trocar, the story is perfectly self-contained. If you’ve never played the game, or played it a hundred times, the film works equally well, which is hard to do when it comes to game adaptations.
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Nailed It
This film does a lot of things right, but the isolation of the night shift is suffocating. Between the darkness of the hallways and the “residents” that refuse to stay still, the film delivers a relentlessly immersive experience. And thankfully, although this movie is filled with dark rooms and shadows, it’s easy to see every little thing. Don’t you hate it when a movie is so dark that you can’t see what’s happening? It’s one of my pet peeves.
The oh-so-awesome Jeremiah Kipp directs the film and has made something absolutely nightmare-inducing. Kipp recently joined us for an interview, took us inside the film, discussed its details and the game’s lore, and so much more. I urge you to check out our interview. He’s awesome!
The Verdict
This isn’t just a cash-grab; it’s a high-effort adaptation that respects the source material while elevating the horror genre. With incredible special effects and a powerhouse cast, it’s the kind of movie that will make you rethink working late ever again. Dropping on Friday the 13th, this is a must-watch for horror fans. It’s grisly, intelligent, and genuinely terrifying.
A former executive at Live Nation, the world’s largest live entertainment company, is suing the company, alleging that he was wrongfully terminated after he raised concerns about alleged financial misconduct and improper accounting practices.
Nicholas Rumanes alleges he was “fraudulently induced” in 2022 to leave a lucrative position as head of strategic development at a real estate investment trust to create a new role as executive vice president of development and business practice at Beverly Hills-based Live Nation.
In his new position, Rumanes said, he raised “serious and legitimate alarm” over the the company’s business practices.
As a result, he says, he was “unlawfully terminated,” according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
“Rumanes was, simply put, promised one job and forced to accept another. And then he was cut loose for insisting on doing that lesser job with integrity and honesty,” according to the lawsuit.
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He is seeking $35 million in damages.
Representatives for Live Nation were not immediately available for comment.
The lawsuit comes a week after a federal jury in Manhattan found that Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary had operated a monopoly over major concert venues, controlling 86% of the concert market.
Rumanes’ lawsuit describes a “culture of deception” at Live Nation, saying its “basic business model was to misstate and exaggerate financial figures in efforts to solicit and secure business.”
Such practices “spanned a wide spectrum of projects in what appeared to be a company-wide pattern of financial misrepresentation and misleading disclosures,” the lawsuit states.
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Rumanes says he received materials and documents that showed that the company inflated projected revenues across multiple venue development projects.
Additionally, Rumanes contends that the company violated a federal law that requires independent financial auditing and transparency and instead ran Live Nation “through a centralized, opaque structure” that enables it to “bypass oversight and internal checks and balances.”
In 2010, as a condition of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, the newly formed company agreed to a consent decree with the government that prohibited the firm from threatening venues to use Ticketmaster. In 2019 the Justice Department found that the company had repeatedly breached the agreement, and it extended the decree.
Rumanes contends that he brought his concerns to the attention of the company’s management, but his warnings were “repeatedly ignored.”
At the centre of Madhuvidhu directed by Vishnu Aravind is a house where only men reside, three generations of them living in harmony. Unlike the Anjooran household in Godfather, this is not a house where entry is banned to women, but just that women don’t choose to come here. For Amrithraj alias Ammu (Sharafudheen), the protagonist, 28 marriage proposals have already fallen through although he was not lacking in interest.
When a not-so-cordial first meeting with Sneha (Kalyani Panicker) inevitably turns into mutual attraction, things appear about to change. But some unexpected hiccups are waiting for them, their different religions being one of them. Writers Jai Vishnu and Bipin Mohan do not seem to have any major ambitions with Madhuvidhu, but they seem rather content to aim for the middle space of a feel-good entertainer. Only that they end up hitting further lower.
