The Alex Theatre Just Started Showing Movies Again. Here's Why It's Not a One-Off.

For five weeks this summer, the marquee at 216 N. Brand said movie, not musical, for the first time in 35 years.

The last time the Alex Theatre put a first-run feature on its screen, the film was Terminator 2: Judgment Day. It was 1991. Since then the Alex has hosted ballet, comedy, touring Broadway, the occasional film festival screening, but not a studio movie opening day. Anyone who grew up in Glendale before that year remembers it differently. Alex Theatre Artistic Director Miles Williams has said that nearly everyone he met on the street after taking the job told him the same thing: they used to come see movies here as kids.

This July, that changed. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey opened at the Alex in 70mm on July 16, a full day ahead of its national release, and strong demand pushed the run past its original closing date to August 20. By the time it wrapped, the Alex had confirmed it was the highest-grossing U.S. theater for 70mm screenings of the film. That is a striking number for a single-screen, city-owned venue competing against IMAX houses across the country, but the number by itself is not the story. The story is what the theater built to get there, and what it is planning to do with it now that the run is over.

What the theater actually built

Getting a studio to hand a 1925 performing arts venue the rights to a tentpole release on opening weekend requires more than nostalgia. Universal Pictures and Nolan's team helped fund a five-week, $500,000 push to install new 70mm projectors and overhaul the sound system before the July release, work first reported by The Hollywood Reporter. A team of twelve worked around the clock to get the new projection booth finished in time. Paint was still drying the day before the first screening.

The detail that matters most for anyone trying to figure out whether this sticks: the booth was built on steel deck platforming rather than poured concrete or a permanent structural addition. That is a deliberate choice. A temporary installation bolted to the building would have signaled a one-time favor to a director with enough box office weight to make a historic theater bend the rules for a weekend. A platform-mounted booth built to be reusable signals something else, a venue positioning itself to do this again.

It already has an answer for what comes next. The Alex is now scheduling eight to ten nights of movie programming each month, according to Hollywood Reporter reporting on Williams's comments, while keeping its full calendar of ballet, comedy, and concerts intact. Two more large-format releases are already booked: Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part Three in December 2026 and Greta Gerwig's Narnia: The Magician's Nephew in February 2027. Williams has described the plan as blending the two identities the Alex has held at different points in its century, rather than picking one.

A hundred years, two eras of film

The Alex opened in 1925 as a movie palace, one of the grand houses built during Hollywood's studio era, with the Greek and Egyptian architectural details and the Art Deco neon tower that still define the block. For more than sixty years it was where films premiered in Glendale. Then came the multiplex era. A new theater built a block away pulled the crowds toward multiple screens and stadium seating, and the Alex closed for first-run movies in 1991. A coalition that included the city, the Glendale Historical Society, and comedian Bob Hope worked to save the building, and it reopened in 1993 following a multimillion-dollar restoration as a performing arts center. It has been that for over three decades, hosting dance, concerts, comedy, and community events while occasionally showing a film as a special engagement rather than a release.

What makes the current shift different from those occasional screenings is capacity and intent. At 1,300 seats, the Alex is one of the largest cinema venues in Southern California equipped for 70mm, a format only a few dozen theaters nationwide can project. That combination, a historic single screen with genuine large-format capability in a walkable downtown, is not something a city the size of Glendale usually has. Mayor Ardy Kassakhian called the return to first-run film a fitting tribute to the building's original purpose as it enters its second century. Williams has put it more simply: he wants the Alex to be a go-to movie palace again, the way it used to be.

What this changes about a night out downtown

If you live within walking distance of Brand Boulevard, this is not abstract. The Alex sits steps from The Americana at Brand, which means a first-run movie night now has an obvious before-or-after stop built in. The Americana's own summer entertainment series, with live performers on the outdoor plaza, runs through September 6 this year, which means there are still a couple of weeks left to stack a live set, dinner along Brand, and a movie in a building with Greek columns flanking the screen, all within a few blocks.

That stacking is worth noticing because it did not exist a year ago. Downtown Glendale has had strong food and retail options along Brand Boulevard for a long time, anchored by places like Porto's Bakery a few blocks north. What it lacked was a marquee reason to end the night at the Alex specifically, rather than driving to a multiplex elsewhere. Two confirmed tentpole releases already on the books, plus a stated plan for eight to ten movie nights a month going forward, is enough of a pattern to change how people plan a weekend rather than treat it as a curiosity tied to one director's fan base.

The eight-to-ten-nights detail also tells you something about scale. That is roughly a quarter to a third of the month, which is a real programming commitment, not a token slot squeezed between touring shows. Combined with the reusable booth, it reads less like a lucky booking and more like a venue quietly restructuring its identity around two audiences instead of one, the performing arts crowd it has served since 1993 and the moviegoing crowd it served for the sixty-six years before that.

The part that will actually decide whether this lasts

None of this is guaranteed to hold. Studio deals for single-screen historic theaters are unusual precisely because they require the kind of technical investment the Alex just made, and there is no public commitment yet for programming past February 2027. What is confirmed is the pattern so far: a major release that outperformed dedicated multiplexes on its own format, an extension driven by demand rather than contractual minimums, and two more studio bookings already locked before the first run even finished. That is a stronger signal than a single successful weekend would be on its own.

For anyone who has lived near Brand Boulevard long enough to remember what the Alex used to be, or who only knows it as the place where the touring shows stop, the theater is worth checking on again. The next film on the calendar, whichever title Williams announces, will say more about whether this holds than anything written this month, including this post.

If you are watching how downtown Glendale keeps shifting, from the Alex's marquee to what is happening a few blocks over on Brand, I keep an eye on these things because they shape how people actually live in the neighborhoods I work in every day. If you want a read on how a change like this fits into the bigger picture for Glendale or the surrounding foothill communities, Ed Dorini is always glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.