Regency to close two historic movie houses in Westwood Village

Two Westwood Village movie theaters that lit up their silver screens during the Great Depression will shut their doors.

Regency Theatres will close the Regency Village Theatre, the landmark movie house also known as the Fox Village Theater at 945 Broxton Avenue, and the Regency Bruin Theatre at 848 Broxton Avenue, according to the Los Angeles Times and Hollywood Reporter. 

The Calabasas-based theater chain will close both theaters on July 25, Lyndon Golin, Regency Theatres president, said in an email. Regency has managed the two theaters for 14 years, but its leases for the properties end this month.

The Village Theatre is expected to close temporarily after it was saved by a Hollywood investor group of 35 filmmakers — including Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan and Bradley Cooper  — led by producer and director Jason Reitman, which bought it in February for $15.5 million.

The owners of the 25,000-square-foot Spanish Revival-Art Deco landmark did not disclose a timetable for renovations.

Built in 1929 by Fox Film founder William Fox, the Fox lit its marquee in 1931, its 170-foot tower a beacon next to UCLA. The 1,400-seat theater, popular with generations of filmgoers, was in 1988 designated a Los Angeles historic-cultural monument.

There was no similar rescue campaign for the 670-seat Bruin, a storied cinema that opened in 1937 as the Fox Bruin Theater, across from the Village Theater. It was designated a Los Angeles historic site in 1988. 

The 87-year-old cinema and its 93-year-old neighbor both appeared in Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 film “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”

The owner of the Bruin theater was not disclosed.

“The [Bruin’s] owners thank the Golin Family and Regency Theaters for our relationship with them for the last 14 years,” the unidentified family said in a statement provided by an unidentified representative to the Times.

The owners said they are “currently evaluating future opportunities for the Bruin.”

The effort to save the Village Theatre came as movie houses in Los Angeles and elsewhere struggled to stay afloat after pandemic-related closures and last year’s strikes by Hollywood writers and actors.

The film pipeline has been slow to rebound, hampering the comeback hopes of theater operators.

Some didn’t survive the pandemic, including the ArcLight Cinemas chain, with six locations in the Los Angeles market, and the Landmark Theatres’ screens at Westside Pavillion, according to the Times.

Regency Theatres, co-founded in 1996 by the Golin family, once operated 29 movie theaters with a total of 195 screens in Southern California, according to a 2012 biography. It now has 19 theaters in California, including the soon-to-close theaters in Westwood Village, and one each in Arizona and Hawaii, according to its website.

— Dana Bartholomew

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