Jeff Worthe and Blackstone have enticed Legendary Entertainment to stick around at The Pointe in Burbank.
The film studio behind the box-office hit “Dune” renewed 89,749 square feet for another 12 years across part of the 12th floor and the entire 14th and 15th floors of the 480,167-square-foot office building at 2900 West Alameda Avenue, according to brokerage CBRE.
A spokesperson for CBRE did not disclose the asking rent, but office space on the fourth floor of The Pointe is currently listed for $61.80 per square foot annually, or $5.15 per month.
The superhero-obsessed studio, launched in 2004, and has produced the Batman “Dark Knight” series, the “Hangover” franchise and several Kong hit movies. It will occupy a slightly smaller footprint than the 105,522 square feet it signed on for when it first opened its headquarters at The Pointe in 2013, a source familiar with the deal said. That made Legendary the largest tenant in the building at the time.
The renewal comes on the heels of a blockbuster year for Legendary. In fact, the studio just announced Monday it bought out Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda — its majority owner since 2016 — for an undisclosed amount. That gives Legendary more freedom to pursue other acquisitions down the road, CEO Josh Grode told The Hollywood Reporter.
And what’s good for moviemakers is great for Worthe Real Estate Group and Blackstone’s 3.2 million-square-foot Burbank office portfolio, which spans 13 buildings and counts several of the industry’s biggest players as tenants, including The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. and NBCUniversal.
The office market in Burbank, about seven miles north of Downtown Los Angeles, has struggled to recover from the pandemic. The tri-cities region north of L.A. , which also includes Pasadena and Glendale, saw negative absorption in the third quarter of 2024, ending with 213,030 square feet more on the market than the previous quarter, according to a report by CBRE. And overall office vacancy in the submarket is 25.3 percent, slightly higher than the 24 percent vacancy rate in Greater Los Angeles as a whole.
That makes Legendary’s deal a ray of sunshine.
“This is a long-term lease, and everyone’s excited,” said CBRE’s Blake Mirkin, who arranged the deal for Legendary. “For Burbank, this is obviously good news.”
The renewal wasn’t at all a foregone conclusion for Legendary, according to Mirkin. He said the company spent three years looking at submarkets across Los Angeles County, but decided to stay put in the end.
CBRE’s Todd Doney and Doug Marlow represented Worthe and Blackstone and declined to comment.