Bankrupt - Steven Spielberg's Dive! Restaurant

In 1994, film industry elites Steven Spielberg and Jeffery Katzenberg came up with an idea to build their very own, highly themed restaurant chain. It opened in Los Angles as Dive! the underwater dining experience where much like Planet Hollywood, you'd be immersed in a grand environment. But unlike their highly successful competitor, Dive only saw 3 locations built. They all closed not long after opening and have been more or less forgotten.

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BrightSunFilms 2022

Presented in 4K

[anlicsceadu]

Here in Tokyo, they now do themed restaurants in the form of "pop-up" shops. The big ones currently are an Alice in Wonderland tea house and a Stranger Things diner (which just opened up, and requires reservations 7 days in advanced...and they're always booked solid). So they're not completely gone over here. They've just realized the life expectancy of these places is short, and capitalize on it by making it a "get it before time runs out!" type of deal. Rather brilliant honestly!

[rossnwirth]

This is the most 90's restaurant ever! It looks like a Nickelodeon cafeteria!

[Seathal]

@Bright Sun Films I am from Barcelona and I distinctively remember going to that restaurant when I was a kid with my father. It was around 96-97 and it was located in Maremagnum shopping centre, at the port. I remembered it as soon as I saw your thumbnail. I didn’t know it came from the US. Thanks for the nostalgia trip.

[joshuaayres]

What I love about this series is you do learn. About the famous and the not so famous. All done in a high quality, well researched manner.

[booliganshootingsports]

I haven't even watched this yet, but oh man, I miss this place. Vegas was my hometown, and I remember we were planning on going here for dinner after a high school dance (2002). We rolled up and I remember being CRUSHED that this place was closed. The whole experience there was so much fun, the colors, the kinetics of the place, even the food was good. I remember them being so proud of their variety of dips that they served with dishes. This was a core memory for me and one that I didn't think I'd be recalling in 2022.

[rosera]

i reaaalllly hope themed things like this come back as trends. surely someone will notice our generation's interest in this stuff they have to

[YurTypicalVegasMom]

I’m a Vegas native and as teenagers it was common to spend weekends roaming The Strip. I remember taking my Sadie Hawkins date to the Dive in 1997. I don’t think I ever ate there again. Now as an adult, I avoid The Strip at all costs!

[tmajcan]

Whenever you open any kind of business, especially a restaurant or bar, don't call it "Dive" lol. Great stuff Jake!

[JoshSmith-xdfl]

I just love 90's tacky themed restaurants. I love the architecture of the buildings, like planet hollywood buildings, this and hard rock cafe buildings.

[Anamnesis]

If you had asked me which famous director might come up with a theme restaurant about deep sea diving, Spielberg is not the name that springs to mind. I'd have thought James Cameron.

[AdboyD-jfuc]

I can remember seeing this place in Barcelona in about 1998, down at the waterfront from memory. Had no idea about the Spielberg connection though. I recall it not being very busy even then.

[madamhummingbird]

I've been to the Dive location is Vegas during the mid 90's. The theme experience was cool and the subs were tasty. I remember the sub fountain in front of the restaurant spouting water every few minutes. If you stood to close to the fountain you'd get sprayed with water. Not such a bad thing during days/nights hanging in the hot desert heat.

[jtstacey]

The issue is I think the idea was more significant than the food they served. A $12 upscale sub was expensive back then in the mid-90s; it's considered expensive now. If he wanted to serve subs, the theming and location scale needed to be thought out better. If it had been a seafood-themed restaurant maybe then you could get away with the price, but this is before the idea of fast-casual had taken hold.

[alikaalex]

I remember when the Century City restaurant’s dive sequence was concluding, the audio effects included the sub crew using the periscope. A crew member asked, “What do you see?” And then the sequence would conclude with a segue back to the standard piped-in music, but the first song to play would include “I see” in the first few lyrics (i.e. “I can see clearly now, the rain is gone…”, “I see a bad moon rising”, etc.). I always thought that was a cute effect.

[EyreAffair]

Great idea for a theme park restaurant, not so much for an independent restaurant chain. I could see "DIVE!" being revived at Epcot, SeaWorld, Volcano Bay, Epic Universe, Islands of Adventure, or Animal Kingdom, for example, much like how other aquatic-themed restaurants and attractions are at these parks already.

[taliwalt]

Dive was right next to AMC movie theaters. I used to go there with friends all the time. We'd see Ross (from Friends) almost every weekend. Good memories.

[paulhenryxray]

Nice to see my kitchen isn’t the only one with the cat hair mod. We went with the silky black fur on a white quartz countertop. Really pops, especially under the pendant lights.

[HeyKim]

This unlocked a memory. I remember hearing about this place way back then and never giving it another thought until now.

[Bluzin]

I remember this place! Worked right there in Century City when it opened. As a young architectural designer there was much discussion around it. Basically, themed retail, hotels and restaurants were popping up as the next best thing to get people to open their wallets with glee. It was kind of disruptive at the time if you consider what else was around. The problem came with most of these investors like Spielberg had no idea how these business actually work and how low the profit margins typically were. Themed spaces are very expensive to build out because everything is custom and unusual. Yes, being close to Hollywood made it easy to tap into available talent and prop studios but nothing about it was cheap. Movie budgets even back then were very different from a build out of a restaurant or retail store. Even with higher than normal priced food, it was not even close to recovering the cost to build the space in the first place. Counting on merchandising to make of the difference was a flawed business plan from the start.

[TekindusT]

Wow, the blast from the past has been real on this one! The video thumbnail brought me back to my childhood, seeing that weird submarine stuck at the wall of the Maremagnum mall in Barcelona. We used to stroll around the area with my family, and still do that when I’m visiting. I have a very very vague memory of dining there, but I was a little kid. They closed shortly after, but the submarine was still up on the wall for a few years. No water would flow down the “cascade” after the whole thing was closed/abandoned making it look even more weird.