Cinema Is So Back. And Gen Z Is Behind It.

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In 2020, movie theaters were on their last legs. Lockdowns and years of declining interest had forced historic cinemas to shutter, including an LA icon, the Cinerama Dome. But recently a new generation of cinema-lovers has been using social media to revitalize the culture of in person movie-watching. Internet culture reporter Candice Lim explores the rise of the Gen Z cinephile movement, and heads to Hollywood to meet the young filmmaker and activist who is fighting to bring the Cinerama Dome back from the dead.

• ⁠Candice Lim⁠, internet culture reporter
• Ben Steinberg, filmmaker, actor, and founder of Save Your Cinema
• Ezgi Eren, founder of 11am Saturday

• Ben, the Man who Saved the Cinerama Dome  — Hear in LA Substack
• An Activist Spent Years Pushing for Hollywood’s Cinerama Dome to Reopen. Why Did He Just Stop?  — Gary Baum, The Hollywood Reporter 
• Cinerama Dome Advocates Take Rare Chance to Put Public Pressure on Owners to Reopen — Brian Welk, IndieWire
• How 26-Year-Old Ben Steinberg Saved the Cinerama Dome — Ryan Lattanzio & Anne Thompson, IndieWire
• Supporters Rally to Save the Cinerama Dome as Future of Hollywood Theater Complex Remains Uncertain — Pat Saperstein & Jazz Tangcay, Variety
• In praise of Ben Steinberg, the hero who stood up and demanded the Cinerama Dome not be just one more derelict, abandoned Hollywood landmark — Reddit

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Morgan Sung: Hi Tabby Cats! Do you have an internet trend, tech subculture or online oddity you’ve been wondering about? Well, now you can ask Close All Tabs to investigate. Go to kqed dot org slash Close All Tabs to submit your question. Okay, let’s get to the show.

For a while, movie theaters had been on a downward spiral. Even the biggest names in Hollywood lamented their demise. Back in 2014, Quentin Tarantino warned of the death of cinema — thanks to the shift from analog filmmaking to digital formats. A few years later, NATO, not that one, but actually the National Alliance of Theater Owners, recorded the lowest theater attendance in over two decades, as tickets got more expensive than ever. In 2019, New York Times film critic A.O. Scott questioned whether streaming would kill cinema, which is actually what Cillian Murphy’s character, a video store owner, predicted in the 2007 romcom, Watching the Detectives.

[Begin clip of Watching the Detectives]

So Neil, what are you gonna do when this place goes tits up?

Well, I don’t think that’s gonna happen for a few years, you know, not until people can get any movie they want beamed directly into their TV set and I’m dead meat.

[End clip of Watching the Detectives]

Morgan Sung: And then, a year after that New York Times story came out, the pandemic hit. 

[Clip of Inside Edition story from YouTube]: Box office sales at movie theaters over the weekend plummeted to a 20-year low. Ticket sales were even worse than in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. 

[Clip of WPRI story from YouTube]: Leadership at Cinemas 8 taking to social media saying the pandemic has made it economically impossible to reopen. 

Morgan Sung: The pandemic shut down cinemas around the world with no real safety net and some theaters never opened up again. Hollywood had poured millions and millions of dollars into blockbusters that couldn’t make it to the big screen. Instead, at the height of lockdown, they skipped theaters and went straight to streaming for viewers to watch from the safety of their homes. I’m talking cinematic masterpieces like Dune… being watched on an iPad.

But today, movie theater chains like AMC, Regal, and Alamo Drafthouse have bounced back. The movie-going experience is now a gamified, thriving subculture that reveres in-person community. The AMC A-list subscription used to be for nerds, and now it’s the ultimate cinephile flex. A viral Letterboxd review is a status symbol. Film podcasts treat going to the movies like it’s a sport. So, how did we get here?

Today we’re diving into the internet’s mission to save cinema and how an iconic Hollywood landmark almost fell to ruin — until a very online Gen Z filmmaker rallied to the public to save it. Get ready.

This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it.

For today’s deep dive, I’m handing the keyboard over to my friend, Candice Lim. If she sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve definitely heard her on Close All Tabs before. She’s also an internet culture reporter, a film and TV critic, and one of my favorite people to follow on Letterboxd. Candice only converted to the Church of Cinema after the release of Challengers, the horny tennis love triangle extravaganza starring Zendaya, which Candice saw in theaters five times. And she’s not the only one trying to save the art of movie going.

Okay. Take it away, Candice.

Candice Lim: Thanks Morgan. In the words of Nicole Kidman… 

[Clip of Nicole Kidman for AMC from YouTube]: We come to this place for magic. 

Candice Lim: So let’s open a new tab: the Savior of the Cinerama Dome.

I wanna take us to Sunset Boulevard on a recent Saturday morning in Los Angeles. I’m standing in front of this big, white dome made out of 316 interlocking concrete panels. It’s the Cinerama Dome. It’s hard to miss next to a Veggie Grill and a gym, but for something so big in the dead center of Hollywood, this theater complex feels… dead. The lights that once lit the night sky have been off for years. And the building itself is in a state of disrepair. But, it wasn’t always that way.

Ben Steinberg: I liked coming here to see 2001: A Space Odyssey in 2014. That was my first time seeing a movie with an intermission, and with over 800 or 1,000 people in the audience.

Candice Lim: This is Ben Steinberg. He’s a cinephile. First off, how many movies have you seen this year? 

Ben Steinberg: Oh, uh, probably over 50 maybe? 

Candice Lim: I can tell you it’s 113. It was on Letterboxd. I checked it out. 

Ben Steinberg: Oh, wow. 

Candice Lim: He’s a former child actor. 

Ben Steinberg: When I was like 13 or 14, I got to do the TV show, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, for a few seasons.

[Clip of Brooklyn Nine-Nine from IMDb]: But it’s my bar mitzvah. We were going to grind. 

Candice Lim: And, he’s an activist. In fact, when it comes to the movie theater revival movement, he’s kind of the activist. For the last five years, Ben has been running a Twitter account called Save Your Cinema. He got started in 2021, when Angeleno’s received a heartbreaking announcement about the very iconic building we are standing right in front of. 

[Clip of Fox 11 Los Angeles story from YouTube]: And we begin with breaking news, and it is very sad news for movie lovers. Pacific Theaters announcing its ArcLight and Pacific Theaters will not reopen after shutting down last year because of the pandemic. This includes the iconic Cinerama Dome in Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard. 

Candice Lim: The Dome had been closed in 2020 due to COVID, just like nearly every other theater. Ownership kept promising it would reopen, but it never did, and cinephiles like Ben began to get nervous. To Ben, that announcement in March of 2021 was the nail in the coffin. 

Ben Steinberg: And then after that, they made no further like, press releases or responded to emails. 

Candice Lim: To understand the importance of this, I need to tell you a bit about the Cinerama Dome and what it means to the city of LA and film history.

The Dome was opened back in 1963, and it’s the first and only concrete, geodesic dome in the world. For decades, it was known as the place to watch the latest blockbuster, and the first film they ever screened was It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, a Stanley Kramer-directed comedy starring Buster Keaton. Then, it became this marquee place to hold premieres, similar to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre — and The Dome made it fun. They turned into a green ogre for Shrek 2. They became the moon for the 2018 Neil Armstrong biopic, First Man. A lot of working filmmakers can remember the most formative movie they’ve watched at The Dome with hopes that one day their film would premiere there too. And beyond the iconic look and blockbuster screenings, this particular theater is important to the history of film as a medium. It’s all about the way movies are shot.

Ben Steinberg: There’s like two different versions of Cinerama. There’s the original three-strip Cinerama, which uses literally three lenses, like three cameras together. And then later on, they did the 70mm Cinerama, which is 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Candice Lim: Without getting too technical, the image 70-millimeter film creates is huge — several times bigger than traditional 35-millimeter. It had to be projected onto a screen that’s large enough to accommodate it. That’s where The Dome comes in. I would describe watching a movie at The Dome as if you were inside The Sphere in Las Vegas. The magnitude of this format, what some call “the great-grandmother of IMAX,” feels magical, especially in the age of vertical video scrolling.

Imagine watching something like Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar at The Dome. It makes you feel like you’re actually on the moon — and you are experiencing this with strangers, all of whom came to this place at this time to share this moment with you. Also, the popcorn is really good.

Ben Steinberg: They have like this really good chef-driven like popcorn. They had like the- the last one they had was Mexican street popcorn. 

Candice Lim: Okay, back to the announcement about The Dome’s permanent closure. So, you have this piece of cinema history, an architectural feat, an iconic industry landmark, closing for good. A lot of people were gutted, including and especially Ben. 

Ben Steinberg: From what I was told through a few different sources was that they just didn’t believe in the theatrical exhibition box office, like they didn’t think they could make enough money, and like they’re obviously very business-oriented. So, I was just under the assumption that they didn’t believe in like the theatrical exhibition box office for the future of it. 

Candice Lim: And every good movie needs a hero, right? Well, for this story, and for a very online group of movie lovers, that hero was Ben. Immediately after the Cinerama Dome’s owners announced it wouldn’t reopen, Ben jumped into action. And even though he might sound mild-mannered, let me tell you: Ben is fearless. And you have to remember the context.

It was 2021. We were coming out of lockdown. Theater attendance was returning at a crawl. And if there was one barrier Ben felt he needed to break through — it was the doors of The Dome. So, he got his keyboard warriors together and created a petition called Save the Cinerama Dome. And this petition was trying to get the attention of the owners of The Dome, the Decurion Corporation.

Ben Steinberg: It was addressed to the CEO of the Decurion Corporation, so I was hoping to at least get a response from him. Then it quickly got 30,000 signatures, but we never got any response. They didn’t even acknowledge it. 

Candice Lim: Ben was frustrated, because as far as he could tell, there wasn’t a good reason for The Dome’s permanent closure. 

Ben Steinberg: Company that owns it, they never went bankrupt, the parent company, they just decided to shut down the theater. So, just the whole like situation was very mysterious, like they have no website and no phone line, and then I started to look at their other properties that they own, and they own some other historic cinemas that have been abandoned for around 25 years… So I kind of got paranoid that they were planning that for The Dome. 

Candice Lim: It’s true. Let’s get into some backstory. Okay, so the Decurion Corporation is owned by the Formans, a billionaire family that owned two major movie chains in California: the Pacific Theater, which started all the way back in 1946, and ArcLight Cinemas, which operated The Dome as well as other beloved LA theaters. But both chains were permanently closed down in 2021, and The Dome, with its peeling walls and overgrown vines, definitely looks like it’s been closed for five years. 

Ben Steinberg: I was documenting just like the deterioration of it, which was crazy, just seeing like stuff falling off just because it’s been abandoned for so long. 

Candice Lim: Ben got tired of seeing this beloved theater stand idly by — wasting away as what some have called, “a tax write-off.” He got this crazy idea. 

Ben Steinberg: Well, I’ve had the idea for like three years, but I knew that once I did it, it could be like the end of the Save the Cinerama Dome campaign. 

Candice Lim: He basically wanted to project a Page Six headline-style photo of the Decurion executives onto The Dome. Once he got the idea, he started a GoFundMe, which raised more than $2,000, and those dollars went toward hiring a projectionist, a security guard, and a little rehearsal… A few days before the stunt. 

Ben Steinberg: I got a professional projection engineer to do it. It just said, “Reopen The Dome,” and then just the images of the CEO and the vice president of development. 

Candice Lim: He actually pulled it off on a busy Friday night when the sun went down and the projection went up. 

Ben Steinberg: I was right between the two big trees and the lampposts, in front of the Los Angeles Film School, but on the sidewalk. 

Candice Lim: Do you notice people stopping and staring at it? 

Ben Steinberg: Yeah, we got a lot of attention like, everyone was looking at the projection and like people in their cars were like, throwing their thumbs up and like, applauding me. 

Candice Lim: But according to Ben, the reason his stunt even went viral is because of the cops. 

Ben Steinberg: Lasted for like two or three hours and then the police came — the police specifically said the owners like don’t want me to get arrested or citated, they just want me to know they consider it a form of escalation and harassment, but I think it was definitely like the Streisand effect. I think it’s a blessing in disguise that they called the police, because I think if they didn’t it wouldn’t have gone as viral. So, I think it definitely drew attention on them. I just wanted to remind them that like, they owned the Cinerama Dome and the public wanted it to reopen. 

Candice Lim: So even though the cops said they were not going to arrest Ben, after two hours, he felt like it was time to go home. 

Ben Steinberg: After I posted about it, it went viral and I knew that was going to kick some things in motion. And then like, the next day I saw that the executives for the company started viewing my LinkedIn profile. So that was definitely a good sign. 

Candice Lim: So Ben finally got the attention of The Dome’s owners. They were checking out his LinkedIn — then came a public hearing where The Dome’s representative was going to be there. So Ben got a second idea, to flood the zone with his supporters. 

Ben Steinberg: She was asked specifically about the Save the Cinerama Dome campaign and like my projection, and she responded saying that the ownership took notice of it and the extreme public interest in wanting The Dome to reopen. 

Candice Lim: But it was very, We Here For You, from Succession, because it’s one thing to say we’re noticing interest versus acting on that interest. So Ben decided to give them a self-proclaimed deadline, August 20th, and they had to either announce they were reopening The Dome or find someone to lease the theater. He wasn’t sure if they were going to actually meet that deadline, but for some reason, he felt closer and closer to a victory.

Ezgi Eren: I think the ArcLight needed someone like him who just wouldn’t back down and wouldn’t take no for an answer. 

Candice Lim: Ezgi Eren is the founder of 11am Saturday, a Substack newsletter she calls a movie restoration project. She interviewed Ben for her Substack back in 2024 before the stunt happened. 

Ezgi Eren: And, you know, he just projected an image onto a building. Like he didn’t break the law. I mean, I don’t know if he technically broke the law, but he didn’t harm anyone. So, if that’s what it took to get the owners to act, that’s good to know. The fact that he raised that awareness in them is amazing. 

Candice Lim: And after years of back and forth, online petitions, and filmmakers like Edgar Wright, Benny Safdie, and Sean Baker showing support, for the first time in a long time, it looked like moviegoers just might have the chance to see The Dome’s silver screen light up once again. Ben is one of the many people trying to keep movie theaters alive — but his efforts are just the most visible piece… of a movie subculture that has come roaring back after cinemas were pronounced dead only a few years ago. And the driving force behind it? Gen Z. We’ll get into that after the break.

Welcome back. Let’s open a new tab: is the Gen Z Cinephile Movement real?

I’ll put myself on blast, because I’m technically in Gen Z, and I am watching an average of three to five movies per week. But, I wasn’t always this way. I actually used to hate movies. I was more of a TV kid. But in 2024, a movie came out that changed how I valued the movie going experience.

[Clip of Challengers from YouTube]: Don’t you want to meet Tashi Duncan? You don’t get it, man. You’ve never seen her in person. She’s in another league. You mean her game? No, I mean she’s the hottest woman I’ve ever seen. 

Candice Lim: Challengers, directed by Luca Guadagnino, stars Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor as three tennis players who sometimes play tennis, but also make out. What got me was the score by the Nine Inch Nails guys. It was electric, and propulsive, and it felt like being in the club — and after many clubless years during the pandemic, I needed that. From that point forward, I became a Letterboxd-er, an AMC A-List member, and a proud solo moviegoer.

Ezgi Eren: I looked around and I didn’t really know many people who still went to the movies, shockingly. It was a couple years ago. And I just felt like the whole experience is dying. 

Candice Lim: Ezgi Eren, again, founder of 11am Saturday, the movie Substack. While Ezgi admits she is a millennial, she is in a lot of Gen Z majority spaces, and she believes Gen Z is the key to getting butts back into those fuzzy little seats. She says they’re looking to reconnect with real people… And real experiences. 

Ezgi Eren: I think it’s the kind of oversaturation of the internet, the influx of content that people are subjected to every day, and the need to kind of get off the internet and go more into real life spaces again. I see it in like book clubs. I see it in like dinner parties. I think it’s the same reason for people going back to the movie theaters as well. Yeah, it’s great. I love it. 

Candice Lim: And it’s not just the movies themselves that are attracting these Gen Z attendees. It’s about what’s happening outside of the theater, online, that’s pushing people to keep going back for more. It’s a digitally fueled cultural shift.

For example, let’s talk about Letterboxd, which is a movie logging app that’s akin to the Goodreads of cinema. It can frankly be a little performative. You start by rating a movie out of five stars. Then you can write a review. Some people take it seriously. Others become trolls. But it’s so communal that your favorite filmmakers and film heads — this is Martin Scorsese, Charli XCX, even Jack Harlow — are logging the same movies you are watching.

Then, you have things like the Criterion Closet. You may have heard of the Criterion Collection. They have a YouTube video series called Closet Picks, where prominent film lovers like Francis Ford Coppola, Paul Giamatti, and game designer Hideo Kojima pick their favorite highbrow DVDs off library-looking shelves. It’s a smash hit. But the reason why Gen Z congregates around these film-themed internet platforms is because they are actively curating their tastes — using accessible platforms almost as an educational way to upgrade their cinema game.

Because at the end of the day, when you log a movie or post a review, it’s your green light at the of the dock, a bid for connection. It’s a way to attract like-minded people with similar taste. Because that’s what COVID ripped away from a lot of Gen Z people: organic connection in public spaces. And Letterboxd… is considered a public space.

Ezgi Eren: Letterboxd and like The Criterion and studios that make movies more catered to Gen Z, like I think those are all kind of partially responsible as well, but it’s almost like they are riding a great wave. I think it was going to happen regardless. But then of course, it does matter that Letterboxd, gameified it. It does matter that theaters are engaging more with their audiences on social media. It has become almost like… a brand — you want to associate yourself with a specific theater more now. I think it’s a combination of all those things. 

Candice Lim: Fandango, the movie ticket website, did a study this year, saying that Gen Z, who are about 14 to 29 years old right now, is the most active movie-going generation, seeing about seven movies per year. I’ve also seen headlines about Gen Z being the loneliest generation right now. Is there a connection? Here’s Ben again. 

Ben Steinberg: I can’t think of like any other third spaces. Like I know AMC Theaters has like a lot of like meetups and like fan clubs where people will just go every week as a group to AMC. So, I think that’s a big thing, I mean like at least for me personally, if I’m doing something social, I’d rather like go to a movie than something else. 

Candice Lim: Ezgi says that even though the intersection of chronically online Gen Z-ers and cinephiles is probably pretty small, it’s a subgroup with growing influence. 

Ezgi Eren: I will say like they’re not big enough to kind of maybe like influence a whole performance of a movie. Like I don’t think everyone who saw Obsession and made it such a success is- does fit in that category. But I do think they have a big influence on marketing campaigns now for sure. I mean, you see it in like press tours, you see it and how, even like, studios with lower budgets, like they’re doing everything to kind of keep up with the content-ification of movies.

Candice Lim: Mm-hmm. 

Ezgi Eren: And like creating like an online experience to try to like get these people to see the movies. So I think their influence is growing for sure and then like after Obsession and Backrooms they’re only going to be stronger.

Candice Lim: Have you ever been influenced by maybe like, a Letterboxd or even a film podcast or something you saw on social media that made you like, I don’t know, wanna go see a movie or made you more excited about something coming up? 

Ezgi Eren: Oh my God, so all the time — all the time. Sometimes it’ll be just like one tweet that I’ll take to heart and go see something. Because I still, I think that’s also the power of these websites is that you can’t really manufacture real interest, right? Like, people don’t spend their hard earned money on things that suck. 

Candice Lim: And even though you’re listening to three people who love going to the movies, there are things about theater culture that still suck. You need good movies and good moviegoing experiences to capitalize on this wave of interest and keep people coming back. But there’s the perennial problem of bad theater etiquette. 

Ezgi Eren: You will come across people either on their phone taking pictures of the screen or just talking to their friends or just being like unruly in general. 

Candice Lim: Then there’s the fierce competition of booking movie tickets. 

Ezgi Eren: The event-izing of the ticket process is very annoying and- and I say that as someone who managed to get tickets to Dune. It’s still not a good process and it could almost turn into like a deterrent for people.

Candice Lim: But the big one, the thing that Ben cares most about, is the fact that it’s not always guaranteed that our favorite movie theaters will be there tomorrow. 

Ben Steinberg: The Regency Theaters Calabasas — it actually literally just got demolished like six months ago and then also the Regancy Theaters in Agoura Hills, which also got demolished just a few months ago, and then also the AMC Promenade 16 which is now demolished. 

Candice Lim: It seems like movie going and the sport of it is being threatened left and right, but… by who?

Let’s open a new tab: who’s the big bad of the movie theater revival movement?

So, if Ben is our unlikely hero, the face of Gen Z’s push for cinema revival, then who are they up against? Who’s the Joker to Ben’s Batman? When I asked, Ben was hesitant to call anyone out by name, even though he did project the heads of the Decurion Corporation onto a dome. Ezgi was a little more direct.

I’m curious, who do you think are kind of… the enemies or gatekeepers of movie theater preservation. Is it like Netflix? Is it studios? Is it a third thing? Is it billionaires, you know?

Ezgi Eren: As for billionaires, I mean… How much time do we have? 

Candice Lim: I wanted to talk about one story that I would say was maybe the most controversial last year, which was Netflix threatening or about to acquire Warner Brothers. Could you maybe explain why that acquisition freaked people out and why were people worried? Why were you worried? 

Ezgi Eren: Yes, Netflix tried to purchase Warner Brothers — and Netflix, as we know, is a primarily direct-to-streaming service. Now, typically, their window of showing a movie in a theater is super, super short, so if you don’t see it in theaters in that period, you can only watch it on Netflix.

So, obviously, that’s terrible news for a studio like Warner Brothers who… put out like some of our favorite movies that we want to experience in theaters. Especially, you know, they had such a good year with One Battle After Another. They have Dune coming out. People just don’t want those to be contained to a television screen. So that was the panic. And I believe they’re still panic there because they are now being sold to Paramount, but we’ll see, we’ll how that goes.

Candice Lim: At the time of this taping, Paramount has officially completed their acquisition of Warner Brothers, and they have now become one giant conglomerate named Skydance.

Speaking of like acquisitions, I mean, this summer Letterboxd apparently is also possibly going up for sale. A lot of people have put their hats into the ring, but Netflix is one of them. Are you worried at all about Letterboxd, for example, possibly being acquired?

Ezgi Eren: I’m very worried about that, yes. 

Candice Lim: Yeah. 

Ezgi Eren: And it seems inevitable. I just don’t know who can buy it that wouldn’t ruin it, you know? It’s not a perfect app right now, but it still feels very much like, belonging to the people… that the idea of like any major corporation owning it, it’s so easy to change it in a way that kind of ruins the movie culture, which is already kind of fragile. That’s not even like getting to the fact that they will probably sell all that data and use it to train AI and all that. 

Candice Lim: So now we’re identifying a few big bads in the water, who are threatening two separate issues. We have people like the Forman family and their Decurion Corporation who are responsible for closing physical spaces to watch movies. Then, you have media giants, like Netflix, prioritizing streaming over theatrical releases and threatening the actual content that goes into those physical spaces.

But, on at least one of those fronts, there’s good news if you’re a movie lover. Because Ben’s projection stunt, the public hearing, the Twitter updates from Save Your Cinema — it all worked. On July 22nd, two months after he lit up the dome with images of the Decurion top brass, Ben woke up to some great news.

[Clip of KTLA 5 story from YouTube]: One of Hollywood’s most iconic theaters could be making a comeback. Deadline broke the news that Sony Entertainment could be planning to resurrect the world-famous Cinerama Dome and ArcLight Hollywood Cinema. 

Candice Lim: So, finally, after five years, The Dome is saved, and Angeleno’s cannot be happier. Alamo Drafthouse, which is owned by Sony Pictures, will reopen the theater in 2028. And per a Sony Pictures spokesperson, renovations have already started — from the marquee lights coming back on, to The Dome’s first power washing in years. So the question isn’t so much, will the Cinerama Dome be saved? But instead, will people go back? If Gen Z has anything to say about it, the answer is certainly. 

Ben Steinberg: I kind of feel like if I just didn’t do any of this, The Dome would kind of just still be sitting closed with them telling people it’s gonna reopen next year, like they always did. 

Candice Lim: And Ben isn’t done being a local hero. 

Ben Steinberg: I raised attention about the Laemmle Theaters in North Hollywood, and luckily they got that theater saved from being demolished and turned into apartments. And then, also saving the Laemmle Theaters in Pasadena and getting Landmark to take over the lease, we did a petition for that, and then I’ve just been sharing other people’s campaigns and now like it’s gone international, so I’m trying to save the, I think it’s pronounced Pallas Cinema in Greece. 

Candice Lim: Do you see yourself as the Spider-Man of movie theaters where it’s like you’re chilling until someone calls you and is like, “Hi, we need to open a theater,” and you’re just like that guy. How do you feel about being almost the person they send the Batman signal for? 

Ben Steinberg: I think it’s amazing. It’s definitely very cool that they reach out to me and hopefully I can like be even more involved with other theaters or like one specific theater company. 

Candice Lim: Even if you’re not a chronically online Gen Z cinephile trying to post an opening weekend review on Letterboxd, going to the movies is still a classic American luxury. It’s the thing you do with your cousins from out of town. It’s what some people do on Christmas when they have nowhere else to go. And sometimes, you just wanna come to this place for magic. So yes, for a few of us, movie theaters are still worth the investment. 

Ezgi Eren: I went to see Spider-Man and — kind of accidentally on day one, I wasn’t planning on it. And I feel like everyone was dressed up in some variation of like red and blue. And I was like, “Wait, I forgot that people used to do this.” Like, I forgot that this was a thing, because it’s been so long. And you know what? Like, that was also such a respectful audience that had great theater etiquette because people actually cared about seeing the movies. 

Candice Lim: And Ezgi’s right. One of my favorite memories of 2026 was seeing The Odyssey at the Universal CityWalk AMC in IMAX on 70 millimeter at 2 a.m. And yes, it did screw up my sleep schedule for about five weeks, but I should be getting it back on track just in time to see Dune: Part Three on opening weekend in IMAX on 70-millimeter, also, at 2 a.m.

For Close All Tabs, I’m Candice Lim.

Morgan Sung: Thanks again to Candice for taking us on that deep dive. If you’re dying to open more tabs about Ben, the Cinerama Dome, and his quest to save LA’s movie theaters, we’ll have some links in the episode description. You can also find more of Candice’s work there. And stick around after the credits for some bonus content. That’s it for this week. I have a movie to catch, so let’s close all these tabs.

Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was reported by Candice Lim. It was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. The Close All Tabs team also includes Chris Hambrick and audio engineer Brendan Willard. Our intern is Lauren Yoon.

Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is executive director of podcasts, and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor-in-Chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local.

This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches. Thanks for listening.

Ezgi Eren: I was gonna say now imagine if there’s a cafe that’s also a theater and you can just spend the whole day there. 

Candice Lim: You’ve been stomping this ground for a little bit and I- honestly you need to pull a Ben Steinberg. 

Ezgi Eren: I know. 

Candice Lim: Save your stump town mama, like I would sign that petition… I really would because you’re right which is that like I’m going to the Nordstrom E bar And then I’m going to Americana. Let’s combine forces. 

Ezgi Eren: Let’s figure this out. Like let’s — Community Goods inside an AMC. Imagine the lines. 

Candice Lim: Oh my God.