{"id":254693,"date":"2026-04-06T22:14:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T22:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/254693\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T22:14:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T22:14:07","slug":"protest-by-cinerama-dome-grassroots-campaign-shut-down-by-police-on-friday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/254693\/","title":{"rendered":"Protest by Cinerama Dome grassroots campaign shut down by police on Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A five-year grassroots campaign to spur the reopening of one of the crown jewels of moviegoing in Los Angeles is on indefinite pause following an incident at the theater Friday night.<\/p>\n

Ben Steinberg, a 26-year-old film student at Cal State Northridge, has long been a vocal and active proponent of reopening Hollywood\u2019s Cinerama Dome, which has been closed since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020. A Change.org petition started by Steinberg has more than 31,000 signatures asking the Decurion Corp., longtime owners of the venue, to reopen or lease the property to someone else who would. Across social media platforms, Steinberg has nearly 12,000 followers.<\/p>\n

From across Sunset Boulevard on Friday night, Steinberg \u2014 along with a projectionist and a privately-hired security guard \u2014 had been projecting images of two members of the Forman family, who own Decurion, onto the front of the Dome along with the slogan \u201cMr. Forman REOPEN THE DOME!\u201d After about two-and-a-half hours, LAPD officers arrived in response to a radio call received around 9 p.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey came to us and they informed us that the property owner considers it harassment and that it\u2019s an escalation and that we have to shut down,\u201d said Steinberg in an interview with The Times on Sunday afternoon. \u201cSo we just shut down immediately. We didn\u2019t contest anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was no immediate response to a request for comment from Decurion on Monday. The LAPD confirmed details of the incident. <\/p>\n

The Cinerama Dome originally opened in 1963 with its white tiled design and distinctive marquee. In April 2021 it was announced by Pacific Theatres that the venue would not be reopening<\/a>. That brief statement regarding the closure of Pacific Theatres and ArcLight Cinemas, which operated the Dome and were also owned by Decurion, said in part, \u201cThis was not the outcome anyone wanted, but despite a huge effort that exhausted all potential options, the company does not have a viable way forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since then there have been sporadic signs of life regarding the venue, mostly to do with liquor licensing and permit requests, such as last October<\/a> when a company called Dome Center LLC filed an application for a conditional-use permit.<\/p>\n

Particularly since it became part of the larger ArcLight Hollywood multiplex in 2002, the Dome had been a vital part of the community of moviegoers in Los Angeles, home to many notable premieres and events. The front of the theater made a memorable appearance in Quentin Tarantino\u2019s Oscar-winning 2019 film \u201cOnce Upon a Time\u2026 in Hollywood.\u201d<\/p>\n

For now Steinberg considers his Save the Cinerama Dome campaign, which began in April 2021, paused but he hopes to resume it as soon as possible. The complaint made to the police Friday was the first reaction of any kind Steinberg has received from Decurion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it definitely tells what their intentions are,\u201d said Steinberg. \u201cThis is the only sign that they\u2019ve given us that they don\u2019t want us to continue and it\u2019s definitely a threat.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Steinberg, the campaign has grown beyond just wanting to see movies again in a favorite venue and into something about who truly owns the cultural capital of the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s extremely important to the community of Los Angeles and it represents the city,\u201d said Steinberg of the Cinerama Dome. \u201cAnd just personally, I have so many good memories of the theater. I would hope that I\u2019d be able to go back in again and watch movies. I think the whole city deserves the movie theater. I don\u2019t think it would be fair for them to keep it abandoned.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Decurion may be operating within its rights as owner of the property, its secretive and mysterious business practices have increasingly angered film fans concerned about the future of moviegoing in the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first posted about it, I thought people wouldn\u2019t care,\u201d said Steinberg. \u201cBut it seems like the whole world cares about the Cinerama Dome. And I think too it\u2019s more than the Cinerama Dome at this point. I think it just kind of represents the overall landscape of L.A. and America and how these large corporations can own historic buildings and keep them abandoned and then sort of push away people who want [them] to reopen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A five-year grassroots campaign to spur the reopening of one of the crown jewels of moviegoing in Los…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[112863,112864,1409,112865,1743,4456,48,52,51,45458,47,50,49,63,112867,1459,7215,6247,1058,112866,19368],"class_list":{"0":"post-254693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ben-steinberg","9":"tag-cinerama-dome-grassroots-campaign","10":"tag-city","11":"tag-decurion-corp","12":"tag-hollywood","13":"tag-incident","14":"tag-la","15":"tag-la-headlines","16":"tag-la-news","17":"tag-lapd-officer","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","20":"tag-los-angeles-news","21":"tag-los-angeles-times","22":"tag-pacific-theatres","23":"tag-part","24":"tag-property","25":"tag-request","26":"tag-theater","27":"tag-theater-friday-night","28":"tag-venue"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}