Vineland Drive-In
443 N. Vineland Avenue,
City of Industry,
CA
91746
443 N. Vineland Avenue,
City of Industry,
CA
91746
15 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 43 comments
At the moment I am not sure. Haven’t been given any information about the future. However, I have been tasked with maintaining and test-running the projectors monthly. That does give me a glimmer of hope. Fingers crossed.
Will Vineland be opening seasonal every year with or without 1st run movies, or will they pick up where they left off before covid/pacific theater bankruptsy, or will they shutdown completley like the other drive ins??? Any info please
Are they using all 4 screens?
I wonder if the “Summer Movie Series” is a soft relaunch/test run or merely meeting a base legal requirement to maintain permits, tax classification, etc. as an active cinema?
Clearly not re-opening for first-run this summer, but they are running what is being called “Pacific Theatres Summer Movie Series” (the first reemergence of the Pacific brand post-bankruptcy!?) every Saturday starting June 17th with “The Pope’s Exorcist.” None of the other films are listed yet but check back here: https://www.clover.com/online-ordering/VinelandDrive-In
Update status to open since it is still open and going to close for the season as of right now
Yes. Sadly, the drive-in will be closing next Sunday. We got the word last week. The swap meet will remain open as it does pretty good business.
From what I gather they plan or hope to maybe open next summer.
Business is not great at the moment. Have only a few big(ish) studio providers (Sony, Lionsgate, A24) which really isn’t enough to bring in the crowds. Not enough family stuff IMO. Expenses vs returns I’m sure is not good.
We’ll see what the future holds. I enjoy being the projectionist and creating digital cinema packages for the screen these past years. Guess I’ll be back at the swap meet for the time being.
According to the website the Vineland will close for the seasons Sunday October 2nd. I thought the Vineland ran year around anyone know if the swap meet will continue? I remember back in the old days Pacific use to close drive ins for the season and just not reopen them. @marcdw, you have any knowledge on the future?
@marcdw Thanks it’s great to hear from you, as you can see from the date on my post I’m not always quick either. I’m actually much more knowledgeable with United Theatres, the company the Foreman’s once ran in Washington. And for United theatre, a company called Pacific Services signed the checks as you put it. That’s my only connection. Yes I bet getting movies will be more of a challenge both because of what’s owed, but also for right now at least there’s only one theater in your network. I don’t know if the film companies still do this but at least in the old days, they always seemed to favor companies with more screens.
Excuse my tardiness. I’m slow to check my emails.
Nationwide Theatres has always been the one that “signs our checks” so to speak. That hasn’t changed. One change I did notice awhile back in the Paylocity app is the addition of Decurion Management Company (sounds like a downgrade from Corporation. :-) ). No, the drive-in hasn’t been sold or transferred or anything like that.
We’ve been in the process of removing Pacific Theaters branding where possible. I made new DCPs with Vineland branded feature presentation and coming soon items for the screen.
Downside to all of this is we can’t yet get any good films from the big studios at the moment. Lionsgate, A24 - yeah. Disney, Sony, Warner - nope. Maybe due to the fact Pacific owes everyone.
Cool side note. We rented out the property to Fox recently. One of the trailers to the new season of American Horror Stories shows scenes shot at the Vineland.
Thanks for that. I just looked it up and I see they are listing jobs at the other swap meet locations under Nationwide as well so it looks like they did not go to RPG as I had previously thought. Also I see Nationwide is listed on Manta as having been formed in 1966, which makes me wonder what it’s done or what else has been under it’s banner for the past 55 years.
If you look on their careers page there is a mention of “Nationwide Theatres Corp”. Company information for this lists Christopher Forman as the key person so it looks like its still under that family’s ownership.
As an addendum to my previous comment: Consolidated Theatres was sold to Reading international in 2007.
As an additional note, and some of you might all ready know this. At one time the Forman family operated three theater companies. Pacific Theatres in California, United Theatres in Washington and Consolidated theatres in Hawaii. Known collectively as C.U.P. United Theatres was very slowly dismantled, starting in the 80’s with redevelopment of their drive in sites, and closure of the few hardtops they had in Washington. The last United theatre was the Valley Drive in, in Auburn, which closed in 2012. Consolidated theatre was sold off, but I’m not really sure when, if I had to guess early 2000’s. I would say that while Pacific Theatres ended in bankruptcy it to was largely dismantled as well. In 1981 they held 125 outdoor movie screens. They were down to just 24 indoor theatres and one drive in by 2002, and before bankruptcy were down to just 6 indoors and the Vineland. My point to all this, is that the Forman family was once a huge player in drive ins and movie theatres, and now the Vineland is the last one. That is unless of course they still have control of or gain control over any of their closed locations. Who knows.
Since my last post I learned that the swap meet division and as CTCrouch noted, the Vineland appears to have been spud off to Robertson Properties, which is also a Foreman family owned company. Robertson Properties as the name soft of implies is a property and land development company. So who knows what the future will hold for the Vineland, but it looks like the family retains it. The RPO division has in the past operated drive ins but it’s never been long term, but who knows it might be now that Pacific is gone.
The Vineland was also part of Decurion’s “Pacific Swap Meets” division. As all three swap meet locations and their associated websites remain in business/operational, perhaps that division was spun off as an operation separate from the bankruptcy or taken over by a new management company.
@dansdriveintheater. Pacific theatres has folded. All locations have closed as their parent company filed chapter 7. Vineland Drive in is still operating. Who owns it I do not know, but all of the Pacific Theatre, branding on the drive ins website, and when you call them is gone, so I think, but do not know that it has been sold or ownership transferred. Hopefully more info will be coming.
it is not listed on pacific theatre’s list of theatre’s is thie still owned by pacific theatres? just curious!
This might be the drive-in theatre seen briefly in the movie “Herbie Fully Loaded”?
Opened on 22/5/1981 on screen 1 with “Happy birthday to me” and “Friday the 13th part 2” and screen 2 with “Airplane” and “Popeye” and screen 3 with “Death hunt” and “Eye witness” and screen 4 with “The legend of The Lone Ranger” and “The increbible shrinkling women”.
Reopened with 4 screens on May 22nd, 1981. Ad posted.
Chips was awesome! Sometimes there would be scenes that had nothing to do with the plot like two hoodlums shooting up a car. I guess they had a time slot to fill and they came up short so someone on the set with no writing experience said hey why don’t we do a scene with two hoodlums shooting up a car it’ll be cool. One thing about digital projection is that you could actually show TV shows or have video game nights.
This might be the same drive-in seen briefly in an episode of the tv series “Chips”(season 5, episode 11 – Concours d'Elegance). You briefly see the Pacific Theatres logo on the back of a screen near the end of the episode, while the first of the two(drunk?) Guys after their cars crashs upside down, is being arrested by the character played by Bruce Jenner.
Better quality grand opening ad and aerial posted.
Opened with a Walt Disney Carnival and “20000 leagues under the sea”