Westwood's Movie Night Has Moved Across Broxton Avenue

On Friday, October 23, the line formed on the sidewalk at the corner of Broxton and Weyburn. The Bruin Theater sells tickets only at its outdoor box office, and it reopened that night with three screenings of LAIKA's stop-motion film "Wildwood" at 7, 9:30 and 11:45 p.m., the Daily Bruin reported. The theater opened in 1937 and had been dark for more than two years. Across Broxton, the Village Theatre had spent the summer as the busier house, with a blue carpet, closed streets and a 70mm run. By then it had closed again.

The two theaters have swapped roles. The modest single screen is now Westwood's working cinema, and the celebrity house is the one waiting for a construction start. For anyone in Holmby Hills whose nearest movie night is Westwood Village, this winter belongs to the Bruin and the Hammer Museum's screening room. The Village's return is a later and less certain event than this summer's premieres suggested.

Three screens, one of them dark

As of Thursday, November 5:

Ticket prices come from the theater's official site, which also confirms that sales are box office only. Daily Bruin reporting gives a sense of how those prices compare. A student who went on opening night paid $15 for "Wildwood" and said the same film cost more than $20 at the AMC in Century City.

The Bruin came back on a cold call

Both theaters went dark in July 2024, when Regency Theatres' lease ended. The Bruin's owners, the Martyn Skouras family, then signed a lease with Rui Pereira, who runs the Kingsway theater in Toronto. LA Magazine reports that the lease runs ten years and that it started with an unsolicited phone call. "Nobody seemed to be running the theater so here I am," Pereira told the magazine.

The building is S. Charles Lee's 1937 Streamline Moderne design. Before reopening, staff spent weeks painting the pillars, cleaning the interior and restoring murals that are close to a century old, according to the Daily Bruin. The projection booth matters most for what the Bruin can show from here. New digital projectors now sit alongside vintage 35mm and 70mm machines, so the theater can run current releases and archival prints. Pereira described the thinking to LA Magazine:

"There's no such thing as old movies. Just movies you haven't watched yet."

The theater's coming-soon page already reflects that mix. It lists "Godzilla Minus Zero," "The Hunger Games," "Wild Horses Nine," "Paper Tiger" and "Werwulf," plus "Blade Runner" and "In the Mouth of Madness," both marked 35mm. None of them has a date yet. Its first two bookings each ran about a week. "Wildwood" played through October 29, and "Fjord" took over on October 30 for a run ending November 5. Studios have contacted Pereira about premieres and special screenings, Deadline reported in July, but none had been announced when this post was written.

The Village's summer was paying for a renovation

The Village's busy summer was a temporary reopening, scheduled to raise money for the renovation, and it was never meant to be permanent. In 2024 a group of 35 filmmakers led by Jason Reitman bought the theater, and Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro are among them. The Los Angeles Times reported in June that a limited run of premieres and screenings was meant to support a $25 million, 12-month renovation set to begin this fall. The season ran in this order:

1. May 6. The Los Angeles premiere of Billie Eilish and James Cameron's concert film "Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour," the theater's first public night since 2024.
2. July 17. A three-week 70mm run of Nolan's "The Odyssey."
3. August. The 25th-anniversary re-premiere of "The Fast and the Furious," plus premieres of "Coyote vs. Acme" and "Practical Magic 2."
4. September 28. The premiere of Tom Cruise's "Digger."
5. October 3. A screening of "Miami Vice: Director's Final Cut," among the last bookings before the theater closed in early October.

The Times article set out what the restoration would add: a restaurant, a bar, a gallery and a multipurpose lobby for filmmakers and premiere events. The American Cinematheque would run the theater, as it does Santa Monica's Aero Theatre. At that point the reopening target was 2027.

The latest status from October 2026 points to a later date. Los Angeles Theatres, a long-running theater-history site, reports that the building is closed again, that renovation has not begun, that Gensler is now the architect, and that Reitman's team has said it plans to reopen in 2028. No formal announcement from the owners has yet replaced the 2027 date the Times reported. For now, the honest answer to when the Village will reopen is 2027 or 2028, with construction still to start.

Until then, repertory nights belong to the Hammer

Until the Village reopens, archival and festival-style film in Westwood happens at the Hammer Museum on Wilshire. Its November and December calendar follows the kind of programming the Cinematheque plans for the Village:

• Thursday, Nov. 5, 7:30 p.m. Gregg Araki's "I Want Your Sex," followed by a conversation with Araki, part of the MoMA Contenders 2026 series.
• Friday, Nov. 6, 7:30 p.m. Curry Barker's horror film "Obsession," also part of MoMA Contenders.
• Saturday, Nov. 7, 7:30 p.m. "Babette's Feast," a UCLA Film & TV Archive screening marking the fifth anniversary of Lulu, the restaurant at the Hammer.
• Wednesday, Dec. 2, and Wednesday, Dec. 9. A two-night Dorothy Dandridge program. The first night pairs her early shorts with the 1999 biopic starring Halle Berry. The second pairs "The Harlem Globetrotters" with "Bright Road," which co-stars Harry Belafonte.
• Saturday, Dec. 5, and Sunday, Dec. 6. Silent films with live narration by benshi Ichirō Kataoka, including "A Page of Madness" on Saturday. On Sunday, "That's My Daddy" plays with "Different From the Others," a German film regarded as the first feature made for a gay audience.

November 5 is this post's publication date, and the two screens overlap that night. "Fjord" ends its Bruin run while Araki is on stage at the Hammer. Our August look at the Holmby Hills summer radius covered the Hammer's galleries. These evenings in its screening room are the museum's other draw.

The rest of Westwood is scheduled for 2027

Among Westwood's large projects, the Bruin's reopening is so far the only one that has already happened. Most of the others carry 2027 dates. Metro's October 14, 2026 community presentation forecasts D Line Section 3 construction through 2027, with the Westwood/UCLA and Westwood/VA Hospital stations opening in fall 2027. The agency labels that schedule subject to change. Beverly Hills is a stop ahead on that line, and we covered its timeline in our post on the Wilshire and Reeves station.

On the street itself, LADOT's Westwood Boulevard Safety and Mobility Project put final design in summer 2026 and construction in 2027, Westside Current reports. Add the Village's restoration, and three of the changes Westwood has been promised are expected to arrive close together, all of them later than this winter. The Bruin's single screen and the Hammer's calendar are what is open now.

Around the corner from the box office

The blocks around the two theaters have kept adding tenants through the quiet stretch. Sana'a Cafe, a Yemeni-inspired coffee and tea shop, opened on Broxton in early October, between the dark Village and Falafel Inc. It seats up to 70 across two floors and serves Yemeni lattes, pistachio lattes and pastries, the Daily Bruin reported. One block east, 26 Pho Cafe opened October 4 with pho and bánh mì. It is at 1067 Glendon Ave. Not every change is an arrival. Sarah Leonard Fine Jewelers at 1055 Westwood Blvd. closed in late August after nearly 80 years because its owners retired.

Michael Russell, executive director of the Westwood Village Improvement Association, told the Daily Bruin that reopening the Bruin is an important step toward bringing more business to the Village. He remembers going to the Bruin as a child to see "Batman," then having dinner, Diddy Riese ice cream or a turn at the arcade afterward, and he plans to bring his son for the same kind of evening. With a $20 general ticket, a single screen and a box-office line on the corner of Broxton and Weyburn, that evening is available again.

Holmby Hills sits close to some of the oldest cinema history on the Westside, and the Bruin's return adds to what the neighborhood offers. Nearby amenities like this are part of how we present a property at Beverly Luxury Estates. If you are weighing a sale or purchase near Westwood Village, request an instant home valuation or schedule a private consultation with Farhad, and we will walk you through the Holmby Hills market in detail.