The Cinerama Dome continued as a leading first-run theater, most recently as part of the ArcLight Hollywood complex, until it closed temporarily in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in California.

Pacific Theatres founder, William R. Forman, announced the construction of the Cinerama Dome in July 1963 at a star-studded, ground-breaking ceremony where Spencer Tracy, Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Edie Adams, and Dorothy Provine donned hard hats, and, with picks and shovels, began construction.

The theatre also has design elements such as a loge section with stadium seating, architecturally significant floating stairways, and, at the time of its opening, the largest contoured motion-picture screen in the world, measuring 32 ft (9.8 m) high and 86 ft (26 m) wide, with a maximum aspect ratio of 2.69:1.

A unique "rectified" print was made with increased anamorphic compression towards the sides, which compensated for distortions that would otherwise be induced by Cinerama's deeply curved screen.

In 2002, after a two-year closure, the Cinerama Dome was reopened as a part of Pacific Theatres' ArcLight Hollywood complex.

[14] The Cinerama Dome made its digital projection debut in May 2005 with Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.

In April 2021, the parent company of Pacific Theatres announced that it would not be reopening any of its locations, including the Cinerama Dome, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[19] In June 2022, it was reported that Decurion Corp. had plans to reopen the theater under the name Cinerama Hollywood along with the adjoining fourteen-screen multiplex.

But by the late 1990s, the motion picture exhibition business began to favor multiplex cinemas, and Pacific Theatres proposed a plan to remodel the Dome as a part of a shopping mall/cinema complex.