On the morning of March 28, a crowd filled the "Red" theater at Hollywood Blvd Cinema on 75th Street, and for a few hours the room stopped being a movie theater and became an auction house. A replica Bluesmobile, complete with fiberglass statues of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, opened at $5,000. A Wicked Witch of the West statue went up. So did life-size Terracotta Warriors, a full-scale Chinese Pavilion, a Golden Sarcophagus and Anubis statues from the Egyptian Theater room, theatrical chandeliers, and the "Hollywood" awning that had greeted moviegoers for two decades. Auctioneer Randy Donley told local reporters he'd just sold a Whitney Houston outfit that was, in his words, "fabulous."
None of this meant the theater was closing. Owner-operator Dana Pobanz was explicit about that. What it meant was that Woodridge's most recognizable entertainment landmark was funding its own reinvention by selling off the very props that made it recognizable in the first place. That's a stranger and more useful story than "local theater gets a facelift," and it's worth sitting with if you've spent any Friday night in that lobby.
Ten screens, three at a time
Hollywood Blvd Cinema has been through several identities on that same stretch of 75th Street. The building opened in 1986 as the Woodgrove Festival Theater under General Cinema, closed in 1999, and reopened in March 2003 under its current name with four screens. It grew to six screens in 2005, nine by late 2008, and ten by 2025. For most of that run, the theater's personality was maximalist and international: an Egyptian room, a Chinese Theater room, a museum's worth of signed posters and costumes crammed into hallways.
The renovation now underway trades that eclecticism for something more organized. Pobanz told the Daily Herald in March that crews are reworking the ten auditoriums three at a time, each one built around a single genre, horror, fantasy, crime, and drama among them, rather than the old grab-bag of themed rooms. She said she expected the work to wrap by September. As of this week, the theater hadn't put out a formal reopening announcement, but its calendar has kept running on schedule straight through construction: a Harry Potter 25th anniversary screening played this past Friday, and Coven Night, a 21-and-up event, is set for September 11.
The auction was the funding mechanism for that shift, not a side event. Pobanz put it plainly:
"The renovation for all of the theaters is a lot of money. And the more we raise, the cooler they can be, the more iconic."
What's actually changing, and what isn't
It helps to separate the parts of Hollywood Blvd that are genuinely different from the parts that are staying put.
| Before the auction | After the sale | |
|---|---|---|
| Ownership | Hobson Financial Group of Illinois, owner since 2014 | Reel Hospitality LLC, which purchased the theater in November 2025 |
| Auditorium theming | Eclectic, room-by-room (Egyptian, Chinese, general Hollywood memorabilia) | Organized by genre: horror, fantasy, crime, drama, rolled out three theaters at a time |
| Physical operation | Open, ten screens, full dinner-and-a-movie service | Still open through construction, no closures reported |
| Special-event calendar | Costume screenings, midnight cult classics, themed nights | Unchanged so far: Harry Potter anniversary and Rocky Horror screenings ran in late August, Coven Night follows on September 11 |
That last row matters. Whatever happens to the walls, the theater's habit of running the kind of programming that only makes sense in a room full of regulars hasn't gone anywhere. The identity being sold off at auction was the decor. The identity that shows up on a Friday night calendar is something else, and it's the part the new ownership doesn't seem interested in touching.
Why the makeover isn't only about looking expensive
It would be easy to read a "luxury remodel" announcement as a straightforward upscale rebrand, and Pobanz used exactly that language when she referred to seating upgrades customers had been requesting "for a decade." But she also connected the redesign to something less about price point and more about who sees themselves in the room. She noted that many younger customers don't recognize older stars like John Wayne, and that even with statues of pharaohs and terracotta warriors going up for bid, the theater's existing collection was thin on performers of color. Her stated goal for what comes next:
"I feel like Hollywood is where dreams go, and you want to be able to see yourself represented."
That's a more specific and more interesting reason to gut a two-decade-old prop collection than "it needed new chairs." The eclectic-museum approach that built the theater's reputation was also, by its owner's own account, an incomplete one. Replacing it with genre rooms is at least partly an attempt to build a collection that reflects a wider range of the audience actually sitting in those seats.
A fall calendar that hasn't gotten the memo
Here's the part of the story that's easy to miss if you only follow the cinema news: while Hollywood Blvd is being repositioned by an out-of-town hospitality company, the rest of Woodridge's fall entertainment lineup is running exactly the way it always has, which is to say, produced by the village itself and priced for a family budget.
The Woodridge Park District is hosting the seventh annual Woodridge Oktoberfest on September 25 and 26 at the Cypress Cove Family Aquatic Park parking lot on Janes Avenue. It's a 21-and-up, two-day event with live music, several local breweries pouring, a photo booth, a beer stein holding contest, and a pretzel toss, this year with an 80s tribute act, Sixteen Candles, on the bill. None of that has changed in tone from year to year. It's still a parking lot, still run by the Park District, still built around the same handful of low-stakes games it's had since it started.
A few weeks later, the Village of Woodridge and the Woodridge Public Library are running their second annual Trunk-or-Treat, a free event built around decorated car trunks, treats, and costumes for families. The village is currently recruiting local businesses and organizations to sponsor a trunk for the event.
Put the two calendars side by side and the contrast is the actual story. Woodridge's most photographed entertainment landmark just changed corporate hands and is mid-overhaul, funded by liquidating its own decor to the public. Meanwhile, the events that define a Woodridge fall weekend for most residents are still being organized at Park District tables and library sign-up sheets, priced the way they've always been priced, and unaffected by who owns the theater six blocks away.
What it says about the neighborhood right now
Woodridge isn't a place where a single landmark's ownership change ripples through daily life. The cinema's transformation is real and worth watching, especially if you've been waiting years for those seats Pobanz mentioned. But it's happening on a separate track from the traditions that actually anchor a Woodridge fall: the Oktoberfest stein contest, the library's Trunk-or-Treat, the same neighbors doing the same low-cost, high-turnout events they've run for years. One part of the neighborhood is being reshaped by a hospitality company's balance sheet. The other part is still being run out of a folding table, and that's not a small thing to know about the place you live.
If you're weighing a move within Woodridge, or curious what a specific block or listing looks like up close, Salma Torres knows this village down to the parking lots where Oktoberfest happens. Let's Connect.
