Mano Baghjajian

I am pleased to share the news that Sony Pictures will be reopening and restoring the historic Cinerama Dome. I was briefed by them on their reopening plans and can’t reveal any details, but I was invited to join the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation so I look forward to working with them to ensure that the restoration honors and preserves the Dome and keeps it exactly as it was in 1963. The Sony people have been extremely generous with me and kind. Getting it to reopen has been a six year odyssey for me. I’ve made many new friends along the way and I am grateful for many people supporting me. I started the petition to save the Cinerama Dome within minutes of finding out it was shutting down and it received over 30 thousand signatures. I was able to reveal the 2023 reopening plans and then break the sad news about it being officially cancelled. Many people told me to give up. Industry figures that I deeply admire told me it would be impossible to convince the family ownership to reoepen it or have it leased to another exhibitor considering their other abandoned cinemas and lack of communication to me. I was called delusional. People made fun of me. Instead, I held protests, spoke with city leaders, provided updates from public records, updated the media, continuously pressed the owners. I had conversations with filmmakers ranging from Wes Anderson to Quentin Tarantino about it. A few months ago I projected the images of the owners faces onto the Dome asking them to reopen and they called the police on me. That was actually a miracle in disguise. I received attention from all around the world and the Cinerama Dome became a topic of conversation again. The general public wasn’t aware that the Dome was abandoned & neglected for 6 years. At the time I had thought nobody would care and it was widely accepted the Dome would be another demolition by neglect. That night was the first form of communication I’ve had with the owners in six years. A few weeks later their property representative responded to a comment about my incident saying “Ownership has taken notice to extreme public interest in reopening” and then  I gave ownership a deadline of August 20th to reopen or pick a new operator or massive protests will resume at their HQ. Just a few months later I’m contacted by Sony about the reopening.  Now I have Save Your Cinema with over 20K followers on social media and millions of views each day.  With the help of my followers we have saved multiple cinemas and are actively working on more reopening soon TBA! I am so grateful for everyone supporting me. Here are just some of the people I’d like to thank! Sean Baker, Edgar Wright, Alma Har'el, Joshua Safran, Alison Martino, Gary Baum, Mark Olsen, Jazz Tangcay, Pat Saperstein, Tait Forman, Christopher Forman , vanfathernighy and every single follower and person who signed my petition and liked my posts. We all made this happen TOGETHER as a community effort. Thank you to EVERYONE! The BEST movie theater on Earth will be reopening 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹