Elie Samaha, who plans to buy a hall for the Oscars, has a mixed record

The home where the Oscars will be televised could soon be purchased by a local producer and venue owner with a storied history in and around the entertainment world. The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Elie Samaha is in discussions to acquire the Dolby Theatre.

The 3,400-seat Dolby Theatre, part of the separately owned Ovation complex at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, is under contract with the Motion Picture Academy through 2028. Bloomberg reported In October 2023, the theater could be sold for $70 million. It is currently owned by the California Public Employees' Retirement System and managed by investment firm Canyon Partners. The theater and Samaha did not respond to requests for comment.

Samaha, who purchased and modernized Grauman's famed Chinese Theatre more than a decade ago with producer Don Kushner (Tron), is a longtime Los Angeles nightlife entrepreneur best known for his Sunset Strip strip club, the Roxbury, a 1990s social hub for the likes of Christian Slater and Shannen Doherty as well as Samaha's first wife, Wayne's World star Tia Carrere. (It also served as inspiration for Saturday Night Live(The “Roxbury Guys” sketch and the subsequent movie starring Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan.)

Samaha parlayed his late-night dealings into a distribution deal with Warner Bros. Pictures. His Franchise banner specialized in backing stars' pet projects at low prices that had failed to find a home elsewhere in town. That model eventually included flops, headlined by John Travolta (Earth Battlefield) and Kevin Costner (3000 miles to Graceland) as well as more culturally resonant releases like The Boondock Saints, All for all And Get Carter.

Samaha's Hollywood credits include serving as judge in a 2004 fraud trial discovery He was personally liable for nearly $97 million to German distributor Intertainment, which accused him of improperly inflating project budgets. The case was eventually settled for $3 million. The same case, about which the FBI made a separate statement, probealso later ended up in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department realization raided his Sherman Oaks home to pay legal fees owed to his top-rated law firm. In 2018, the business partners claims He and Kushner (the duo had also since bought Two Bunch Palms in Desert Hot Springs, an industry favorite) improperly diverted $580,000 to businesses including the Chinese Theatre.

The following year, the Los Angeles city attorney deposit Criminal charges have been filed against Samaha and his associates over various alleged security issues at his Project nightclub in Hollywood, claiming that security, lighting and other problems “put their patrons and everyone in the vicinity in potential danger every night.”

Samaha, a Lebanese-American citizen, and his current wife, Lara, who has a green card, have also made international headlines in recent years for their legal actions against prominent Lebanese political figures, which originally stemmed from a family inheritance claim. The U.S. State Department to be involved on behalf of the couple after their visit to Lebanon in 2019, with the intention of resolving the dispute, and ended up being incarcerated in a military prison.

Samaha — whose other properties included the iconic Hollywood restaurant Yamashiro as well as the Fox Theatre and the Vogue Theatre, two historic movie theaters on Hollywood Boulevard that have since been converted to late-night venues — is also currently appears on the Writers Guild's strike/injustice list, which prohibits members from working with him. After Franchise went bankrupt following the Intertainment verdict, the Writers Guild, DGA and SAG joined in the search for potential residual claims for its members.

Samaha has since begin a new production and distribution company, Luminosity Entertainment.