What was iPic Scottsdale?
When Scottsdale Quarter opened in 2009, part of its plan was a movie theater upstairs. It came on December 10, 2010: iPic, a Boca Raton company that sold moviegoing as a night out. There were eight small auditoriums with reserved recliners, pillows and blankets, free valet and popcorn, cocktails served at your seat, a tequila lounge called Salt, and from New Year’s Day, Tanzy, a Mediterranean restaurant next door.
In 2018 iPic rebuilt it with its newest seating: two-person pods in curved wood, front-row chaises and call buttons for waiters. A year later the company was bankrupt. Its new owners closed the Scottsdale theater and Tanzy on January 30, 2020.
The seats didn’t stay empty for good. Landmark Theatres opened an eight-screen cinema in the space in December 2021.
Ten years upstairs
The opening. iPic was founded by Hamid Hashemi, who had run the Muvico chain, and in the fall of 2010 it bought the U.S. theaters of Gold Class Cinemas. Scottsdale opened that December under the iPic name; the former Gold Class theaters elsewhere weren’t renamed until May 2011, which makes Scottsdale one of the first to open as an iPic. ASU’s State Press called it Arizona’s second luxury theater, after the UltraStar. In 2011 a Premium seat cost $17.50 and a Gold Class recliner $25, with food served during the first twenty minutes of the film.
The pods. On April 27, 2018, iPic reopened Scottsdale as the showcase for its next design: “Premium Plus” pods, two leather recliners in a curved wood enclosure; chaise lounges with swivel tables in front; and push-button service. iPic was then a Nasdaq company with fifteen theaters in nine states.
The end. iPic filed for Chapter 11 on August 5, 2019. That October a judge approved its sale, for $51.8 million, to an affiliate of the Retirement Systems of Alabama, the pension fund that had lent it about $220 million. In mid-January 2020 members got an email: “As part of our restructuring, we have made the difficult decision to close our iPic Scottsdale location, effective January 30.” It was the chain’s only Arizona theater.
After. Landmark Theatres signed for the space in August 2021 and opened December 16, 2021, with eight screens of recliners and a bar, calling it its Arizona debut.
The sources, and the disagreements
Main sources: Cinema Treasures’s listing and its 2010 announcement; the State Press in February 2011; iPic’s April 2018 release; Wikipedia and The Coastal Star on the bankruptcy and sale; ABC15 on the closing; and Phoenix New Times and KTAR on Landmark.
What’s unsettled:
- Seats. 720 by the Phoenix Business Journal as quoted on Cinema Treasures, probably the 2010 layout; 544 by Cinema Treasures’s listing, probably after the 2018 reseating.
- The Gold Class purchase. September 2010 by Wikipedia, October by iPic.
- “The first iPic.” Scottsdale opened as iPic before the Gold Class theaters were renamed, but we haven’t seen iPic call it the first.
- Landmark’s Arizona debut. KTAR says Scottsdale was Landmark’s first in Arizona; New Times mentioned another Landmark-owned theater in west Phoenix.
Why it matters
iPic Scottsdale is the luxury-cinema decade in one room. It arrived when theaters were adding recliners and food service to compete with home viewing, it got iPic’s newest design in 2018, and it closed when the company’s debts caught up with it, just weeks before the pandemic closed every other theater too. Its room is a cinema again, which is more than the Camelview, the Sonora Village or the Kachina can say.