{"id":568865,"date":"2026-04-07T01:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T01:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/568865\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T01:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T01:00:09","slug":"activist-pushes-for-reopening-amid-pressure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/568865\/","title":{"rendered":"Activist Pushes for Reopening Amid Pressure"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSince Hollywood\u2019s iconic Cinerama Dome movie theater closed in 2020, at the onset of the pandemic, Benjamin Steinberg has been making a scene about it. He started a popular dedicated social media account, launched a petition that amassed more than 30,000 signatures, held multiple rallies and, in recent days, staged a special effects-driven protest.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat last one drew a police response, and now he says his \u201cmovement\u201d to \u201csave the Cinerama Dome\u201d has ended amid fear of legal reprisal.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat happened?<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 26-year-old actor-filmmaker hired an on-site lighting engineer to projection-map a vivid rebuke of the property\u2019s ownership on the theater itself for what he views as civic abandonment. The illumination specifically called out Chris Forman, CEO of his family\u2019s Decurion Corp.: \u201cMr. Forman REOPEN THE DOME!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tForman\u2019s father William \u2014 a pioneering Southern California drive-in theater owner who also founded the Pacific multiplex chain \u2014 opened the Dome in 1963, premiering with It\u2019s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Later, Forman himself built up and later shuttered his own, high-end ArcLight theater group, including its flagship location adjoining the Dome. The family\u2019s business is now focused in commercial and industrial property development.<\/p>\n

\n\tTwo hours into the second night\u2019s demonstration, on Apr. 3, the LAPD informed Steinberg and his associates that the Formans considered it harassment and wanted it shut down immediately. While they weren\u2019t threatened with arrest or issued a citation \u2014 they were operating from a public sidewalk across Sunset Blvd. \u2014 Steinberg has since chosen to end the campaign. \u201cI can\u2019t continue,\u201d he says. \u201cThis is clearly a First Amendment issue but they\u2019re very wealthy and I can\u2019t afford to mess around with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSteinberg considers himself an earnest accountability activist, armed with public records and insider tip-offs. Meanwhile, the Forman family clearly sees him as a gadfly nuisance.<\/p>\n

\n\tSince the Dome\u2019s closure he\u2019s been a close, invariably hopeful chronicler of what he\u2019s believed to be the venue\u2019s imminent reopening. But more recently, his messaging has turned pessimistic, documenting the structure\u2019s accumulating graffiti, broken historic tilework and revealing finances.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve found that they reassessed the property to get lower taxes,\u201d Steinberg says, pointing to L.A. County documentation. \u201cThat confirmed for me that they aren\u2019t reopening the Dome any time soon. They just delay the reopening and continue to blame it on Covid.\u201d He adds that he\u2019s separately been told by people in contact with decision-makers at Decurion that \u201cthey don\u2019t want to reopen it and lose money on theatrical [exhibition] right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDecurion didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2025, The Hollywood Reporter found<\/a> that several major exhibitors had made serious inquiries about the Dome, but it wasn\u2019t being made available by the family. Decurion\u2019s other legacy property holdings include the Hollywood Pacific Theatre, which was first developed by the Warner brothers in 1928 as a showcase for sound and later was itself converted to the widescreen Cinerama format. It\u2019s been dormant since sustaining damage in the 1994 Northridge earthquake.<\/p>\n

\n\tSteinberg, who attended films at the Dome multiple times each week before its shuttering, cites the Hollywood Pacific Theatre as a grim precedent, and thinks civic officials should be doing more to pressure the Formans to return the landmark to active use. \u201cI would hope that city leadership can try to persuade them to reopen it,\u201d he says. \u201cOr at least encourage the family to better communicate to the public its intentions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe Cinerama Theatre in its earlier years. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since Hollywood\u2019s iconic Cinerama Dome movie theater closed in 2020, at the onset of the pandemic, Benjamin Steinberg…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[251096,236,88],"class_list":["post-568865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-arclight-hollywood","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}