Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino has purchased the Vista Theatre in Los Angeles’ Los Feliz neighborhood, he said on the Monday episode of the Armchair Expert With Dax Shepard podcast.
Confirmed by the Los Angeles Times this week, the deal also involved seller Vintage Cinemas, which had yet to reopen the beloved theater since the throes of the coronavirus pandemic. Los Angeles County property records show Tarantino acquired the property for about $4.73 million in December.
“We’re going to probably open it up around Christmas time,” he said on the podcast. “And again, only film.”
The Vista Theatre is Tarantino’s second such purchase. Since 2007, he also has owned the New Beverly Cinema, where movies are shown with film instead of digital projection.
Still, the reopened theater will differ from New Beverly Cinema, starting with the fact that it “won’t be a revival house,” Tarantino said.
“We’ll show new movies that come out where they give us a film print,” he said. “It’s not going to be like the New Beverly. The New Beverly has its own vibe. The Vista is like a crown jewel kind of thing.”
Located just north of where Sunset Boulevard becomes Hollywood Boulevard, the Vista Theatre is a historic single-screen theater that opened in 1923. Though it is not officially designated as a landmark, the Lewis A. Smith-designed, 400-seat theater remains “a historical and vital part of the Los Feliz area,” according to the Los Angeles Conservancy.
