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This week marks the tenth anniversary of Regal’s Foothill Ranch 22. While the theatre has never quite lived up to business expectations, the site does have a rather colorful back story.

Back in 1993, the Foothill Ranch Development Company announced plans to build a retail and entertainment center, on a fifteen acre parcel, beside the Foothill Transportation Corridor. The centerpiece of this development was to be a 24 screen, 4,000 seat cinema, run by AMC. At the time, the theatre would have been the nation’s largest and AMC’s fourth venture in to Orange County. This announcement also came on the heels of Edwards’ plans to develop an eighteen screen venue a few miles away, at what would later become the Irvine Spectrum complex.

True to form, Edwards didn’t take this encroachment on their home turf lightly. Accelerating and expanding their Irvine project, the chain opened the Spectrum theatre early (before the retail portion of the development had broken ground) and increased the cinema’s screen count to 22. Also in retaliation to AMC’s Foothill plans, Edwards took a more aggressive approach to winning bids on cinema projects, in near bye Aliso Viejo and Mission Viejo. Faced with ever stiffening competition from Edwards, AMC officially backed out of the Foothill Ranch project in the summer of 1996.

The following year, another suitor entered the Foothill Ranch Cinema project, via Knoxville, Tennessee based Regal. At the time, Regal was a newcomer to the Southern California market, having entered the area through the purchase of Krikorian Theatres’ original chain. The Foothill location, while now downsized to a 22 screen plan, was slated to be the company’s west coast flagship. However, as with AMC’s earlier effort, Edwards quickly took action to hinder the project.

Initially threatening to build it’s own theatre across the street from the Foothill Ranch Center, Edwards managed to push, then cash strapped, Regal in to a “wait and see” mode. After waiting out Edwards’ fruitless threat, Regal completed the Foothill cinema in 1999, only to consider a last minute offer, from Edwards, to purchase the venue. However, having lost the company’s patriarch in 1997 and recently entered in to a $250 million financing deal with Bank of America, Edwards was unable to pull off the deal, making way for the theatre’s long delayed opening, on September 17, 1999. None the less, Edwards did manage one parting jab, offering a week long free popcorn and fifty cent hot dog promotion at it’s locations, to coincide with the Foothill’s opening week festivities.

The ensuing years would see Edwards and Regal slip in to bankruptcy; both ultimately falling under the same ownership and Regal Entertainment Group banner. The Foothill Ranch cinema, which had been the source of so much contention, for the better part of a decade, would prove to be a disappointment, settling in to being one of the county’s under performing theatres.

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