The LoveSac couches inside the Inwood Theatre are gone. Leather recliners have replaced them. New LED poster cases hang where the old ones were, and the terrazzo at the entry has been refinished. On Saturday, October 31, Los Bastardos will perform The Rocky Horror Picture Show in front of a house that has already sold out.
Two years ago that night was in doubt. The theater at Lovers and Inwood closed temporarily in 2024 after its operator defaulted on the lease. The theater's recovery since then, along with the stores that opened around it this fall, adds up to an unusual plan for a Bluffview corner.
A Default, a Month-to-Month Lease, Then Three Years
The Inwood Theatre opened in 1947. Since then it has burned down, closed, reopened, been bought by Landmark Theatres, switched to art and foreign films, and been remodeled several times. The 2024 default could have ended that run. Inwood Village's landlord chose to keep the theater instead.
As The Dallas Morning News reported in July, Landmark contacted the landlord to cure the default, and the two sides moved the theater to a month-to-month lease. Christine Mullis manages the property for L&B Realty Advisors. She told the paper the goal was to give the operator "the opportunity to be able to really turn the ship around."
In May 2026, Landmark signed a new three-year lease, its first since the default, and committed to upgrading the guest experience. The recliners and poster cases came first. L&B Realty told The Dallas Morning News that more updates are planned over the next two years.
The three-year term gives the theater a fixed place in the center's plans for the next few years, and the center has since filled in around it.
The Landlord's Bet Runs Toward the Theater
Usually a historic theater is treated as the anchor that brings people to the shops around it. Inwood Village's management has said it sees things the other way around. In the same Dallas Morning News article, L&B Realty described its hope that new neighbors, naming PopUp Bagels and Jungle Studio Fitness, would help revitalize the theater.
"Our hope is that the community will really rally around Landmark and Inwood Theatre," Mullis told The Dallas Morning News.
The same article put the theater in a wider pattern. Movie theaters were hit hard after COVID-19, and art house screens may be able to recover as audiences look for something local. That only works if enough people walk past the box office in a normal week. A bagel line at 9 a.m., a strength class at 6 p.m., and a home store on a Saturday afternoon all put people on that sidewalk.
Who Opened Next Door This Year
The new arrivals cluster close to the theater. PopUp Bagels came first. The Dallas Morning News filed its opening-day review under the heading "PopUp Bagels in Dallas' Bluffview." The shop is at 5450 W. Lovers Lane, next to the theater, and opened April 24, 2026. On day one, the line ran down the block. It is the company's first Texas location.
This fall, two neighboring suites at 5370 W. Lovers Lane opened within a week of each other.
| Tenant | Address | What it is | Status as of mid-October 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| PopUp Bagels | 5450 W. Lovers Lane | Bagel shop, first in Texas | Open since April 24, 2026 |
| Ball & Buck | 5370 W. Lovers Lane, Suite 325 | 4,500-square-foot apparel and outdoor store with barbershop | Grand opening held Oct. 8 |
| Rejuvenation | 5370 W. Lovers Lane, Suite 322 | 7,000-square-foot lighting, hardware, and home store | Grand opening held Oct. 15 |
| LiftHER | 5550 W. Lovers Lane | Strength-training studio | Listed by the center, reported as set to open |
| Lake | Not yet announced | Sleepwear brand | Set to open, no date announced |
| Buru | Not yet announced | Women's fashion brand | Expected in 2027 |
Ball & Buck calls its store a Dallas flagship. According to its grand-opening listing, the store spans multiple levels and includes a full-service barbershop, a hidden gun room, and a restored vintage Jeep. The listing describes it as more destination than traditional store. A barbershop brings people back every few weeks, which is the kind of steady traffic the landlord said it wants.
Rejuvenation is the Williams-Sonoma brand known for lighting, hardware, bath collections, furniture, textiles, mirrors, and vintage pieces. The Dallas store is its fourteenth location and its second in Texas. Its Design Crew offers complimentary design help on projects from a single room to a whole house, and the store has dedicated resources for trade professionals. For a neighborhood with as much renovation and rebuilding as Bluffview, a showroom of door hardware and light fixtures a short drive away is a practical addition.
Small Brands With Short Store Lists
The boutiques still to come follow a clear pattern. The Dallas Morning News reported on October 15 that Buru, a fashion brand a little more than a decade old, lists only two other boutiques, in Palm Beach, Florida, and Charleston, South Carolina. Lake, the pajama brand, lists fewer than half a dozen shops, including locations in those same two cities.
A brand with three stores nationwide can't be found at every mall in North Texas. When a center lands one, it gives shoppers a reason to come to that particular corner, and to walk past the theater's marquee on the way. Corinne Hoffman, a vice president at L&B Realty Advisors, said in the center's statement that the new tenants are "reinforcing Inwood Village's role as a vibrant hub for the surrounding community."
PopUp Bagels fits the pattern from the other side: a first location in Texas. Rejuvenation has fourteen stores in total. Each of these tenants is close to the only one of its kind nearby, so each sends Dallas shoppers to Lovers and Inwood specifically.
This corner of Lovers Lane has been changing for a while. A few blocks east, the strip has been picking up more of Devonshire's identity. And as with Preston Hollow's restaurant wave, Inwood Village's 2026 additions are going into an existing center. No new square footage is being built.
Halloween Week at Lovers and Inwood
For many people, the clearest sign of the theater's health will come on Halloween night. Los Bastardos has run the weekly Rocky Horror performance at the Inwood Theatre for more than a decade, with a live cast acting along with the film. Landmark Theatres' event page confirms the troupe performs live with the film at Inwood.
The troupe's 2026 Halloween tour listing marks the October 31 Inwood show as sold out. Its September 26 show at Inwood was billed as a "Halloween Pregame Party," starting at 11:59 p.m. with the characters in Halloween costume, and that one sold out too. If you don't have tickets for the 31st, the weekly shows return after the holiday.
Victor Entropy, the cast's director, first came to a show in 2016 and joined soon after. When a freeze a couple of years ago caused water damage to the theater's murals, he helped repair them. He told The Dallas Morning News that the murals and Art Moderne design make the building a natural home for the show. "There's a certain charm to having an older venue," Entropy told the paper. "An independent theater just has so much character to it."
Even Mullis, who manages the property, told the paper it had been a few years since she'd been to the theater. The new seats changed that. She said she told her husband, "Now that they have new seats, we've got to go and check it out."
A practical route for the coming weeks starts with an early bagel at 5450 W. Lovers. From there, walk the two new suites at 5370, then check the Inwood Theatre's marquee for the next weeknight film.
Rejuvenation's hardware and lighting are often where a room starts to take shape, and those choices land best when they're planned with the architecture around them. If a fixture or a vintage find on Lovers Lane has you rethinking a room, or a whole house, S&R Development can help you bring those selections into a remodel or custom build, with founder Saad Chehabi involved from the first drawing to the final installation. Contact Us.