The house of the Oscars telecast could quickly be bought by a producer and native venue proprietor with a checkered historical past in and across the leisure enterprise. The Hollywood Reporter has realized that Elie Samaha is in discussions to accumulate the Dolby Theatre.
The three,400-seat Dolby, a part of the individually owned Ovation complicated at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, is contracted with the Movement Image Academy by way of 2028. Bloomberg reported in October 2023 that the venue may promote for $70 million. It’s at present owned by the California Public Staff’ Retirement System and managed by funding agency Canyon Companions. The theater and Samaha didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Samaha, who bought and upgraded the landmark Grauman’s Chinese language Theatre greater than a decade in the past together with producer Don Kushner (Tron), is a longtime L.A. nightlife entrepreneur nonetheless finest identified for his Sundown Strip membership the Roxbury, a Nineteen Nineties social nexus for the likes of Christian Slater and Shannen Doherty in addition to Samaha’s first spouse, Wayne’s World star Tia Carrere. (It additionally served because the inspiration for Saturday Evening Stay’s head-bobbing “Roxbury Guys” skit and subsequent film starring Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan.)
Samaha turned his after-dark connections right into a distribution take care of Warner Bros. Photos. His banner Franchise specialised in cheaply backing stars’ pet tasks that hadn’t landed a house elsewhere on the town. This mannequin got here to incorporate flops headlined by John Travolta (Battlefield Earth) and Kevin Costner (3000 Miles to Graceland) in addition to extra culturally resonant releases like The Boondock Saints, The Entire 9 Yards and Get Carter.
Samaha’s Hollywood file features a choose in a 2004 fraud go well with discovering him personally answerable for practically $97 million to German distributor Intertainment, which claimed he’d improperly inflated tasks’ budgets. The case ultimately settled for $3 million. This identical matter, which the FBI individually probed, later additionally resulted within the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Division finishing up a raid on his Sherman Oaks house to repay authorized charges owed to his blue-chip regulation agency. In 2018, enterprise companions claimed he and Kushner (the pair had additionally collectively since purchased the industry-favored Two Bunch Palms in Desert Sizzling Springs) improperly diverted $580,000 to ventures together with the Chinese language Theatre.
The following yr, the Los Angeles Metropolis Legal professional filed prison prices in opposition to Samaha and associates for quite a lot of alleged questions of safety at his Hollywood nightclub Mission, claiming improper safety, lighting and different issues “put their prospects, and everybody within the neighborhood, in potential hazard each single evening.”
Samaha, a U.S.-Lebanese citizen, and his present spouse, Lara, who has a inexperienced card, have additionally made worldwide information in recent times for his or her authorized efforts in opposition to senior Lebanese political figures, which initially arose out of a familial inheritance declare. The U.S. State Division bought concerned on the couple’s behalf after they visited Lebanon in 2019, aspiring to settle the dispute, and ended up incarcerated in a navy jail.
Samaha — whose different holdings have included the long-lasting Hollywood restaurant Yamashiro in addition to the Fox Theatre and the Vogue Theatre, two historic Hollywood Boulevard film theaters which have since been transformed to after-dark venues — additionally at present seems on the Writers Guild’s Strike/Unfair Listing, which prohibits members from working with him. After Franchise went bankrupt following the Intertainment verdict, the Writers Guild, DGA and SAG joined in looking for potential residual claims for its members.
Samaha has since began a brand new manufacturing and distribution agency, Luminosity Leisure.