Tarantino Is New Owner of Historic LA Movie Theater

Quentin Tarantino believes some movie theaters can come back from the pandemic better than ever—and he's putting his money where his mouth is. The director disclosed in a podcast Monday that he is the new owner of the historic Vista Theatre in Los Angeles, which first opened in 1923, Variety reports. "I bought the Vista on Sunset," Tarantino said during a discussion of the future of movie theaters on Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast. "We’ll probably open it up around Christmas time." He said the Vista will have a "different vibe" from the New Beverley Cinema, which he bought in 2007.

"It won’t be a revival house," Tarantino said, per Deadline. "We’ll show new movies that come out where they give us a film print." He described the Vista as "like a crown jewel kind of thing." "So it will be the best prints, we’ll show older films, but they’ll be like older films where you can hold a fortnight engagement," he said. Tarantino told Shepard that some of the big chains that "have taken all the specialness out of movies" don't deserve to survive. "They have been writing their own epitaph for a long time," he said. "It’s been crazy throughout my career to see how the film experience is lessened for the viewer like every five years." (More Quentin Tarantino stories.)