Landmark moves into Westwood
Company's exex aim for circuit growth to 200 screens
Financial terms weren't revealed, but plans call for refurbishing the aging property as a West Coast flagship complementing Landmark's newly rehabbed Sunshine Cinema in New York. The commercial Regent will close on Jan. 10 and reopen as an arthouse in late January.
Los Angeles-based Landmark, which is owned by Silver Cinemas of Dallas, currently operates 163 specialty screens in 17 markets nationwide. The circuit plans to open the five-screen Sunshine Cinema -- a onetime Yiddish vaudeville theater in downtown Gotham -- on Dec. 21.
The Regent, a mid-size monoscreen of 400-plus seats, reps the first acquisition since Landmark's new management team was installed in May after a takeover of Silver by L.A. buyout firm Oaktree Capital. Execs aim to grow the circuit to 200 screens, with several acquisitions expected during the coming year.
"That's the magic number," marketing veep Ray Price said.
Prime updating
The Regent isn't tagged for stadium seating of the sort installed at the Sunshine, but execs say renovations will be first-rate.
"This will be our flagship house in Los Angeles, and we are committed to bringing the classic Westwood 'red carpet' treatment to specialized film," Landmark CEO Paul Richardson said.
The Regent acquisition marks a strategic push into a much-desired exhibition neighborhood that's hosted scores of movie preems in recent decades. But the venue's makeover also marks the return, after a 20-year absence, of arthouse fare to Westwood, home to tens of thousands of UCLA students.
"This is not only a milestone for Landmark, but it signals a change for the top independent distributors to have the same level of exposure in Westwood … as the Hollywood studios do," exec veep Bert Manzari said.
New neighbor
Deal also reps renewed investment in a neighborhood marked by recent retrenchment by dominant exhib Mann Theatres.
Mann's exit from the Regent will reduce Mann's Westwood operations from 10 screens to five, after exhib completes its planned shutdown of the Mann Quad complex in the neighborhood. Like many exhibs, Mann has been hurting from too much competish and too little revenue, and so it's been shutting older, money-losing properties.
Meanwhile, United Artists Theatres plans to shut its three-screen Westwood UA in January, sources said. That property is located south of Wilshire Boulevard and thus just below Westwood Village, site to a 6,030-patron neighborhood seat cap that's been maxed out for years.
But the Quad's closing, expected by year's end, will slice Westwood theater operations by 1,100 seats. So with Landmark's incursion into Mann's exclusive north-of-Wilshire domain, some observers now speculate it's only a matter of time before further screen closings and the allure of an historically lucrative market will prompt a new multiplex proposal by one circuit or another.
