You can dine and recline in a reinvented movie theater at The Falls. Take a look
The Falls mall has spent five months without its signature movie theater. But moviegoers at the open-air Kendall shopping landmark have reason to pause streaming and head to the neighborhood cinema again.
The Falls movie theater, revamped and rebranded as Regal Bistro, a dine-and-recline movie palace, had an informal opening about a week before the owners announced the completion of the project on Wednesday.
Gone are the lobby’s outdated arcade games. If you miss those, The Falls has a nearby modern game center, Arcade Time Entertainment, which opened in December 2023.
Gone, too, is the neon 1990s carpeting that spilled out from the drab lobby entrance with its unstaffed box office booth through the winding halls into the 12 theaters.
The old seats that some social media influencers on Reddit said smelled from cleaning solution are gone, too. Regal Bistro now has contemporary dual-motor recliners and front-row lay-flat loungers. No more neck-twisting to the see the screen, but the movie better be exciting because those seats can be so relaxing ... Zzzzzz.
“The staff at Regal Bistro at The Falls are excited for local moviegoers to experience the newest and what we think is the best dine-in theater operating in South Florida,” Ahmed Moustafa, the venue’s general manager, said in a statement. “Seeing and hearing so many positive guest reactions to this modern cinema concept confirms our success in fully realizing this theater’s needed transformation.”
So, what should moviegoers be excited about? Let’s take a look:
Falls movie screens from 1980 to 2025
The Regal Bistro, 9000 SW 136th St., still has 12 theaters — the same since a 1994 revamp after Hurricane Andrew shuttered the original theater in August 1992. When the mall’s multiplex first opened on Feb. 8, 1980, the complex had seven theaters and was called “Movies at The Falls.”
Opening week movies
Movies that opened Friday, Dec. 19, at the remodeled Regal Bistro at The Falls:
James Cameron’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash” and the biblical musical “David.” “The Housemaid,” a psychological thriller based on Freida McFadden’s bestseller, and “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants.”
The “Anaconda” meta-reimagining of the 1997 J-Lo movie, this time with Paul Rudd, and “Marty Supreme,” a sports comedy-drama starring Timothée Chalamet, open at Regal Bistro on Christmas Day.
Movies that opened that February Friday in 1980? “The Last Married Couple in America” featuring George Segal and Natalie Wood in the title roles, “Hero at Large” and “Just Tell Me What You Want.” Remember them? We don’t either.
Christmas week 1979 holdovers at theaters included “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and “Kramer vs. Kramer.” Paul Schrader’s “American Gigolo” with Richard Gere opened on Feb. 1, 1980, just a week before The Falls’ theater. That neo-noir film had moviegoers tapping their feet in the Kendall aisles to that year’s biggest pop hit, the Blondie theme song, “Call Me.”
Theater seats
The Regal Falls had 1,296 seats from its 1994 revamp to the summer of 2025. The revamped Regal Bistro at The Falls has about half as many — 767 reclining seats.
That’s because luxury recliners require more floor space than traditional stadium seating, Regal communication manager Kevan Kerr told the Miami Herald in July when the old theater closed for remodeling.
For those counting: The largest theater, Auditorium 8, went from 302 seats to 144. Auditorium 1 declined from 94 seats to 45 but gained two spaces for disabled customers. There were 13 handicap spaces spread around the auditoriums at Regal Falls. Regal Bistro increases accessible seating areas to 23.
The new seats have motors that allow adjustment of headrests and seating positions. The added front row lay-flat loungers make the theaters’ forward-most section “a novel cinematic experience.”
The sound system
Upgrades to all auditoriums feature Barco laser projection and premium audio through Dolby 7.1 surround sound systems. That should make the third “Avatar” movie sound even more immersive at the Regal Bistro than the first “Avatar” did at the Falls’ former theater in 2009.
The dine-in experience
Moviegoers can go back 45 years to the 1980 popcorn, Milk Duds, M&Ms and soda they gobbled from the concession stand. The old standbys are still there. After all, what’s a movie theater without the smell of buttered popcorn wafting through the air?
But Regal Bistro at The Falls is raising the game, touting itself as a “dine-in theater concept.” Servers take food and beverage orders from guests planted in their luxury recliners in each of the 12 auditoriums.
Items on the expanded full-serve menu include bacon cheddar potato skins, a brew-pub beer cheese bacon burgers, chicken BLT, crispy fried pickle chips and handmade barbecue chicken pizza.
But servers won’t be milling around during the featured movie.
“Our servers are trained to be efficient and minimize the distraction for food delivery,” Kerr said on Thursday. “Servers are available in auditoriums to take orders and payment up to the beginning of the movie. Food is brought to your seat even if you order from the bar area.”
The Bistro lounge
The sleek new lounge area is designed for pre- and post-movie socializing, according to Regal. This is where you can debate whether director Paul Feig’s vision of “The Housemaid” and Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney’s interpretation of the characters in novelist McFadden’s book bests the source material or not.
The full-service bar boasts a selection of 24 beers on tap, including a few local craft labels, according to the chain. The lounge is also surrounded by large-screen televisions to keep guests up to date with current non-cinema entertainment.
This story was originally published December 19, 2025 at 6:17 AM.
