Jason Reitman Was Ready to Spend Millions to Save the Historic Bruin Theatre. Can a Scrappy New Team Reopen It by October?

Aug 20, 2026 - 19:10

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Jason Reitman Was Ready to Spend Millions to Save the Historic Bruin Theatre. Can a Scrappy New Team Reopen It by October?

It’s a surprisingly good time for old movie theaters in L.A., but actually reopening one can be a bear. Just ask the guy running around Westwood in a literal bear costume earlier this week.

That’s Edwin Gomez, a former Vista employee and an aspiring projectionist now volunteering with the city’s next big revival effort. “I got involved out of pure coincidence,” Gomez told IndieWire.

The Bruin Theatre, which closed alongside the Village when longtime operator Regency Theatres departed Westwood in late July 2024, is now targeting an ambitious October reopening under a new independent team. If they pull it off, the Bruin will join a remarkable wave of California movie theaters getting second acts. Tarantino resurrected the Vista. Netflix restored the Egyptian. Even the Cinerama Dome is plotting a comeback thanks to Sony and Alamo Drafthouse.

CHRONOVISOR, Anne Laure Sellier, 2026. © Grasshopper Film / courtesy Everett Collection

A number of Hollywood heavyweights are leading that charge. Take Jason Reitman and the coalition of more than 30 filmmakers, including Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, and J.J. Abrams, who together bought Westwood’s Village Theatre. With plans for a sweeping $25 million renovation in the works, the newly christened Directors Village opened temporarily this summer and will eventually be operated and programmed by the nonprofit American Cinematheque.

Jason Reitman speaks onstage at the 39th American Cinematheque Awards held at The Beverly Hilton on November 20, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.

The Cinematheque already operates the Aero Theatre and Los Feliz 3 as well as programs at the historic Egyptian. But just across the street from Directors Village in Westwood, the Bruin Theatre’s comeback is a very different operation. Toronto exhibitor Rui Pereira recently signed a lease for the property, per Ben Steinberg. One of three L.A.-based collaborators helping lead the Bruin’s reopening, Steinberg is also the activist whose Save Your Cinema campaign kept attention on the Dome since it shuttered pre-pandemic.

“The theater, just walking inside, it feels like it’s in perfect condition,” Steinberg told IndieWire of the Bruin. “The seats are in really good condition. We’re pretty optimistic.”

IndieWire got a closer look during a more than two-hour tour of the Bruin with Los Angeles theater historian Bill Counter, another member of the local team which also includes Bay Theatre operator Peter Kunellis. The theater seems largely intact, but much of the building is visibly old and in need of new paint or repairs. Counter identified the auditorium’s main air-supply fan as original equipment dating to 1937, and described mechanical and electrical systems that have been added onto and modified repeatedly over the decades.

That doesn’t necessarily dictate how expensive the Bruin will be to reopen.

“Whenever anyone asks me how much a theater restoration is going to cost, I say, ‘How much do you want to spend?’” Counter told IndieWire. “You could come in and say, ‘OK, we’re going to spend five million and do a major renovation and completely new systems.’ Or you could come in like Rui and say, ‘Who knows how to fix that damn thing backstage?’”

That’s an important distinction at the Bruin. In fact, the last group to lease the property was also associated with Jason Reitman. Developed alongside his plans for the Village, that Bruin effort ended in court amid a multimillion-dollar dispute over what it would cost to restore the theater.

By reviving old equipment and personally handling some repairs, Pereira’s team is taking a wildly different approach with a target date to reopen this fall. Whether that’s realistic remains to be seen, but understanding the challenge means reexamining the last time someone tried.

How a $450K Problem Became a $2 Million+ Problem

In 2024, while assembling the filmmaker coalition behind Directors Village, Reitman’s team also began pursuing the Bruin. Reitman’s Bruin Directors Circle LLC was a separate entity, although the two theaters had historically operated as a pair. Before Reitman, Regency Theatres leased and operated both Westwood locations from 2010 until closing them together in July 2024.

Reitman’s interest in controlling the entire operation made sense, and both properties were mostly or entirely owned by the same multigenerational group. But just as Reitman’s filmmaker coalition was acquiring the Village, his other group offered the Bruin’s owners three paths forward. They could either commit to an $8.5 million outright purchase, a 34-year long-term ground lease, or a hybrid of the two. The Bruin’s owners declined to sell and pursued the lease.

Reitman’s bid to rent the Bruin ultimately went through, but the theater’s grand reopening did not. Court and bankruptcy records reviewed by IndieWire show the effort unraveled barely a year later amid a dispute over the building’s condition and the cost of repairs.

Prior to signing the lease, Reitman’s group brought in three private consulting and engineering firms to inspect the property. That included AEI Consultants, which identified $450,625 in immediate, short-term, and anticipated repairs and maintenance after a June 2024 inspection.

At first, that assessment didn’t seem to threaten the deal. In a July 12 email later entered into the bankruptcy record, a broker working on Reitman’s behalf told the landlords the AEI report was “suggesting over $500k in repairs,” but that they remained confident in an eventual agreement. Four days later, the broker told the landlords the prospective tenant would commit to major repairs over the following year, “most significantly a new roof and cooling tower.”

By August, however, the anticipated scope and cost of the project had grown dramatically. After further analysis of the building and what the broker described as “much deliberation” with Reitman, he told the Bruin’s landlords that necessary mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and roofing work alone was expected to cost more than $2 million.

Still, they proceeded.

On or about September 18, 2024, the newly formed Bruin Directors Circle (BDC) and the theater’s longtime owners entered into that 34-year ground lease — which, yes, included the historic movie theater but also encompassed the multiple commercial storefronts wrapping around the corner property at Broxton and Weyburn. The agreement began at $575,000 in annual rent, escalating 3.3 percent each year, while effectively placing BDC between the building’s owners and their existing commercial tenants. Those individual leases were subordinate to BDC’s ground lease, meaning Reitman’s group was responsible not just for reopening the theater but for maintaining and overseeing its existing tenancy structure.

Of course, within months, the two sides were fighting over the condition of the property and who was responsible for fixing what. In a January 2025 civil complaint, BDC acknowledged that it knew the Bruin required substantial work before signing the lease but alleged that it later discovered additional structural and latent defects requiring several million dollars more to address. BDC sued to unwind the lease, alleging mistake of fact and misrepresentation by the owners.

The landlords disputed that account, and in both a cross-complaint and subsequent filings in BDC’s bankruptcy case, they argued that Reitman’s group knew what it had agreed to — pointing to the pre-lease inspections and emails discussing more than $2 million in anticipated MEP and roofing work.

The parties agreed to binding arbitration that March without a public ruling on which side was right about the theater’s condition. BDC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy that June, and the parties stipulated to rejection of the ground lease and turnover of the property effective October 24, 2025.

An attorney for the Bruin’s ownership group confirmed for IndieWire that the matter was “resolved out of court to the mutual satisfaction of both parties.” The terms are not public, and Reitman’s representatives did not respond to IndieWire’s request for comment.

What Does an Old Theater Really Need?

Just how much of that recent history carried over into the new team’s plans for the Bruin is hard to discern, at least from the outside. Asked whether he knew why Reitman’s group backed out of the property last year, Steinberg said he didn’t. “I’m not exactly sure,” he told IndieWire. “I know that there was some legal stuff, but [Reitman] is not involved with the Bruin anymore.”

What the new team can speak to is what they’ve already encountered since getting the keys to the theater just a few weeks ago. And so far, their response to the Bruin’s current condition has been less about replacing everything they can and more about figuring out what still works well enough to open the doors this fall. There’s no question it’s an iconic spot.

Andrew Cooper / © Columbia Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection

The lobby isn’t much to look at yet; it’s sparsely furnished and includes concessions with snack and drink prices that seem quaint just two years later. But step into the vestibule and the Bruin’s movie-star appeal becomes harder to miss. It’s the same entrance where Quentin Tarantino filmed Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate arriving to watch herself in “The Wrecking Crew” in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” one of the movie’s most nostalgic Tinseltown sequences.

Standing inside the auditorium, it’s easy to see what the new tenants are excited about. The enormous single-screen room remains strikingly intact and impressive, even if wrinkled fabric, faded finishes, and other signs of wear and tear make clear the Bruin has been around for nearly 89 years. Its seats aren’t original, and even the carpeting comes from the theater’s past life, with Regency’s “R” still lining the walkways.

The room has a maximum occupancy of 697 people, and much of its old presentation infrastructure appears to have survived surprisingly well. Behind the screen, five full-range speaker systems remain in place — enough, Counter said, to properly present vintage 70mm films with their original six-channel sound. (Backstage, Counter also pointed out an old bus-stop sign he’d been told was a prop from “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” but he couldn’t say for sure.)

The deeper you go into the building, the stranger the Bruin’s accumulated history becomes. The old manager’s office contains a painted mural and a single stained-glass window, the latter of which no one on the tour could explain. “I don’t know,” Counter said when asked about its origins. “I’m assuming it was there originally.” Nearby, a whiteboard calendar left behind by Regency Theatres still notes the Los Angeles premiere of “Twisters” on July 11, 2024. The Bruin didn’t host the premiere itself, but its exterior was used to support the event taking place at the then-Village Westwood across the street.

On the roof, mysterious charm gives way to mind-boggling engineering. Counter walked IndieWire through a maze of electrical and ventilation equipment that has accumulated additions and modifications over the decades — all of it above a massive pitch-black attic. The Bruin’s neon sign was recently assessed for repairs, with work expected to happen after dark so technicians can see exactly what’s lighting up and what isn’t.

Then there’s the Taco Bell of it all. Counter pointed out a panel labeled for the chain restaurant and explained that each storefront has separate electrical service but runs through the larger property’s infrastructure. Taco Bell, Hibachi Papi, and the other tenants are all separately metered, he explained, allowing their power use to be deducted from the theater’s bill. That’s a specific example of the practical complexity baked into this kind of lease.

Understanding it, Counter said, is “a puzzle.”

“I like puzzles,” he said.

That attitude carries into the projection booth, which Counter — a veteran projectionist and former electrical contractor — warmly describes as “a war zone” right now. When IndieWire visited, he and eventual bear mascot Gomez (also co-founder of the local Physical Media Society) had spent enough time cleaning and sorting through equipment that day to proudly show off their dirty fingernails. Just getting to the point where the Bruin can show movies again has already required considerable work.

The theater’s digital system sat offline for so long that its encryption key expired, meaning the Bruin will need a new digital cinema server. And of its two DCP projectors, one is unusable and will likely be sold, while the other is currently being serviced. Also on the new Bruin team, Kunellis runs the film program at the Bay Theatre in Seal Beach and, per Counter, works wonders on digital projectors around L.A. He’s expected to help source equipment for the Bruin, and Pereira may bring his own cache of projection equipment from Toronto.

One important machine won’t be coming back. According to Steinberg, Regency Theatres sold the Bruin’s old 70mm projector to Reitman’s Village group, where he said it was used for the recent run of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey.” The American Cinematheque did not confirm the projector’s provenance, but a representative told IndieWire that the projectors currently in the Village booth required hundreds of hours of refurbishment and restoration before they could properly present 70mm with mag sound for the now-completed “Odyssey” run.

The Bruin isn’t screening anything right now, but the proximity still confused some moviegoers. Steinberg said he saw people repeatedly wander into the Bruin while “The Odyssey” was playing, assuming the Bruin had reopened and that Nolan’s film was available there.

“I’ve personally been in the building almost every day this week, and we’ve had multiple people thinking it was open, trying to watch a movie or thinking ‘The Odyssey’ was showing,” Steinberg said. “It was fun to see people’s reactions.”

Can the Bruin Open Its Doors by October?

The Bruin team still intends to bring back 70mm, and figuring out how to do that is half the fun for people like Counter. His approach to the rest of the building is similarly preservation-minded.

“I’m a big believer in saving stuff,” Counter told IndieWire. “I’m not a guy who says, ‘Oh, that’s old. Let’s throw it away.’”

Age itself isn’t necessarily the problem. But keeping a 1937 building alive is one thing, while determining what it needs to reopen legally and safely is another. And not every old movie theater presents the same challenges when it comes to restoration.

Counter pointed to the physical differences between the Bruin and Directors Village across the street as an example. The Village’s prominent FOX tower — once photographed with Robert Redford hanging from it in 1965 — presents a seismic consideration that the lower-slung Bruin does not share, Counter said. Without a comparable structure, he does not believe their theater faces that particular problem.

Notably, the new team has not commissioned another comprehensive building survey since Reitman left. Instead, Counter said, the current team reviewed the major reports prepared in 2024, and believes those assessments don’t necessarily reflect the building’s condition today.

“Many of the systems have, in fact, been upgraded over the years and are fine,” Counter said.

The Bruin is now bringing in qualified specialists to assess individual systems as needed. Counter said much of the theater’s electrical infrastructure has already been modernized and that he is evaluating where additional work is required. He also said they would bring in qualified HVAC technicians to assess the related equipment and establish a regular service program.

“We believe proper maintenance of older equipment is always preferable to ripping things out just because they’re old,” Counter wrote in a follow-up email, with Pereira, Kunellis, and Steinberg copied.

Counter said the Bruin’s fire-alarm system is currently monitored, its emergency generator will be tested in the coming weeks, and several minor plumbing issues are being addressed. The team’s immediate priority, he said, is getting the theater “clean, functional, and welcoming,” with cosmetic and other upgrades coming later.

But before anyone can buy a ticket, the city still has to sign off.

Counter said approvals from the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (LADBS) and Los Angeles Fire Department are now the team’s “top priority.” He also clarified that previously discussed private events and FYC screenings in September are no longer realistic on their current timeline.

Without a Certificate of Occupancy, he said, the Bruin can’t hold even isolated rentals or private screenings. LADBS was preparing a response to IndieWire’s request for information at the time of publication, and the Los Angeles Fire Department directed IndieWire to the city’s public-records portal for property records.

For now, October remains the target at the Bruin. “Our issues are not technical,” Counter said. “The question is if we can get through the city bureaucracy fast enough.”

Two Different Theaters, Two Different Revivals

Programming is still being finalized, but Steinberg described a mix of repertory and throwback titles during the week with first-run movies on weekends and midnight screenings also under consideration. Longer term, the team hopes to add an upstairs microcinema equipped for 16mm projection.

The Bruin has also begun discussing programming partnerships with UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television, including opportunities for PhD students to curate screenings. “We are aligned with the visionary filmmakers, many of whom are TFT alumni, in their goal of revitalizing Westwood with the reopening of the Bruin Theater,” dean Celine Parreñas Shimizu said.

It’s worth emphasizing that the operational and programming talent between these different Westwood restoration efforts are decidedly separate. The American Cinematheque said it has no affiliation with the Bruin. And while Counter said he and Steinberg had recently stopped by Directors Village and briefly spoken with members of the Cinematheque team, he also agreed that there have been no substantive conversations between the two operations.

Even still, Counter sees the theaters as natural allies.

“Anything either theatre does to promote Westwood and get patrons into the theatres benefits us both,” he said.

Nonetheless, the contrast is impossible to miss. Directors Village has a coalition of major filmmakers behind it, a $25 million renovation planned, and an established nonprofit preparing to shape its cinematic taste and consumer experience. The Bruin expects to employ fewer than five people.

“We’re not a major company. We’re not billionaires operating it,” Steinberg said.

Earlier this week, their small operation got a taste of massive showmanship when Pereira arranged for Universal to use the Bruin’s marquee and poster cases to promote a 25th anniversary screening of “The Fast and the Furious” across the street at the Village, per Counter.

Shortly after IndieWire left, Gomez put on the bear costume and worked the sidewalk to celebrate the Bruin coming out of hibernation. But in an e-mail, the American Cinematheque told IndieWire the Village screening was an outside rental and that it specifically did not organize the Bruin’s participation.

It’s a tale of two very different theater restorations that’s set to get even more intriguing soon. The Cinematheque expects Directors Village to close for renovations in October. If Pereira’s team can secure the approvals it needs, that’s the same month the Bruin hopes to reopen.

After decades operating as a pair, one could go dark just as the other lights up.