July 21, 2021: -AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest cinema chain, adds two more Los Angeles locations to its roster.

On Monday, the company said that it was taking over the leases of the 14-screen cinema at The Grove shopping complex in the Fairfax neighborhood and the 18-screen location at Americana at Brand in Glendale.

Both places were operated by Pacific Theatres and are owned by Caruso, the real estate company.

In April, Decurion owned the Pacific Theatre and ArcLight Cinema chains, said it would not reopen its 17 locations. AMC has collected above $1.6 billion in cash from stock sales. It had disclosed that it was looking at several of old leases of Decurion, looking for locations that had strong ticket sales before the pandemic.

In 2018, The Grove theater was the second-highest-grossing cinema, and the Americana was the fifth-highest-grossing cinema in the Los Angeles area. In August, AMC is most likely to reopen these theaters.

“These two theaters each are located in world-class lifestyle centers offering the best in retail, dining, and entertainment options,” AMC CEO Adam Aron said on Monday.

“Each was conceived and is run by Caruso,” he added.

Expanding AMC’s footprint has always been at the heart of Aron’s strategy. Aron acquired Carmike, Odeon, and Nordic shortly after taking the role of CEO in 2015.

The company shares were down modestly after Monday’s closing bell but are down more than 40% over the previous month. The price of the company’s stock has been cut in half from its peak of $72.62, which was hit in early June of 2021. The wild swings came as the name was swept into the Reddit investing craze and other “meme” stocks like GameStop and Bed Bath & Beyond.