Skydance-owned Paramount Pictures has taken over the lease on the Bay Theater in Pacific Palisades and plans to reopen the theater, which has been closed since last year’s fire at the Palisades in January 2025.
Paramount plans to renovate the theater with state-of-the-art projection systems and in-seat food and beverage service, Rick Caruso, who owns the Palisades Village shopping center where the Bay Theater is located, said in an interview. Caruso is the founder and chairman of the real estate firm Caruso.
Paramount plans to screen first-run theatrical films from all studios. The theater will be operated by The Lot, a La Jolla-based luxury dinner theater chain with four locations in California. The theater is expected to reopen later this year, Caruso said.
“The return of this movie theater is a great signal for all of Los Angeles,” he said. “Los Angeles is resilient, and we will show the country that Los Angeles can recover from a terrible disaster, and that the bounce back will be far greater than the failure.”
Palisades Village reopened in August after more than $100 million in renovations, including major infrastructure work. The luxury outdoor mall survived the Palisades fire but needed renovations to eliminate possible contaminants from the fire.
Caruso declined to share the terms of Paramount’s lease, saying it was long-term only. Paramount declined to comment on the size of its investment in the theater.
Caruso said he brought up the Bay Theater issue at lunch last year with David Ellison, the chief executive of Skydance, which was working to acquire Paramount at the time. The two were discussing this deal and Ellison’s belief in the importance of the movie business to the industry.
“Together with Caruso, we are proud to help bring the Bay back to life as a place for the Pacific Palisades community to come together around the shared cinematic experience,” Ellison said in a statement. “This theater has always been about more than movies alone; it is woven into the fabric of this neighborhood, and it is a privilege to help restore it.”
The Bay Theater was previously leased by Netflix and was taken over by Netflix in 2021. The company used the theater to host special events, screen classic films, and showcase its own original theatrical films.
Caruso described Netflix and the company’s Chief Executive Officer Ted Sarandos as “incredible stewards” of theater and added that Sarandos was “a total gentleman” in discussing Paramount’s move into theater.
The Bay Theater announcement comes as Paramount’s Warner Bros. It comes about a week after it completed its acquisition of Discovery. The newly combined company, which will be renamed Skydance upon completion of the deal, is required to release at least 30 movies a year as part of a settlement agreement with 12 state attorneys general over antitrust allegations.
Ellison has long touted his love for movies, and earlier this year he attended the CinemaCon convention of theater owners to reiterate his commitment to theatrical release.
Studios had been barred from owning movie theaters for decades under Paramount consent decrees that a federal judge struck down in 2020. Netflix has since operated the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood and the Paris Theater in New York.
“Through our curation and special hospitality, we look forward to welcoming the Pacific Palisades community back to movies the way they were intended to be shared,” Adolfo Fastlicht, founder and CEO of The Lot, said in a statement.