O.C. Planet Hollywood a Contender, ‘Rocky’ Says : * Restaurant: Stallone and other movie partners will take over Reuben’s across from South Coast Plaza. Film decorations will include Darth Vader’s costume and a mammoth Batman statue.
Looking for a West Coast location, the trendy New York nightspot Planet Hollywood passed up Los Angeles’ Melrose Avenue and Restaurant Row in Beverly Hills.
Instead, its owners chose the site of a Reuben’s restaurant at South Coast Plaza Village.
On Friday, to help pump up interest in a Planet Hollywood sequel that will be an hour’s drive from its namesake community, the restaurant trotted out superstar Sylvester Stallone. The cinema-themed restaurant is due to open this summer after renovations.
Speaking before about 300 cheering fans, Stallone unveiled the first bit of movie memorabilia to be placed in the new location: the Darth Vader costume from the “Star Wars” trilogy.
“This is not just a restaurant,” said Stallone, wearing jeans, Western boots and an orange-and-white Planet Hollywood varsity jacket. “It’s a new concept. It’s an adventure. . . . This has flourished into something that translates worldwide so that it is fun.”
The star of the “Rocky” and “Rambo” movies predicted that the new location will regularly draw celebrities, even if it is a hefty drive from Bel-Air or Malibu.
Stallone, who together with fellow action movie stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis owns a stake in the Planet Hollywood corporation, said he expects to visit the Santa Ana restaurant once or twice a month when he is not shooting movies.
“For a free meal, (celebrities) will go anywhere,” Stallone said jokingly. “This is an area that requires a great deal of notoriety, in the sense that it isn’t just a sleepy little hamlet.”
After the restaurant announcement, Stallone and his entourage visited South Coast Plaza across Sunflower Avenue for some shopping. Other shoppers--some shouting “Hey, Rocky!” and “Yo, Adrian!”--peered through windows to watch Stallone shop for Italian suits and shirts at Emporio Armani. Mike Juul, 21, of Irvine jumped in the air after Stallone shook his hand.
“I sprinted for him,” said Juul, noting that he has Stallone posters pasted on his bedroom walls. “I wasn’t going to let him in his car without (seeing) me. He was only about my height, but he’s (well built). He was looking good.”
Planet Hollywood premiered in October in Manhattan in a star-studded opening. The 350-seat restaurant features the motorcycle from Schwarzenegger’s “The Terminator” and the dress Dorothy wore in “The Wizard of Oz.”
A similar restaurant can be expected in the Santa Ana location. However, its design will be different, with an Art Deco exterior, rotating spotlights, a movie-marquee facade and a huge statue of the “Batman” character at the entrance to a second-floor balcony. Patrons will walk through themed interiors that will mimic a spaceship or ancient ruins.
The $5-million, 10,000-square-foot restaurant will be owned and managed by the five partners in Italatin Inc., a Long Beach group that already operates three restaurants at South Coast Plaza.
The 250-seat outlet will feature California cuisine, including salads, pizzas, cheeseburgers and fish and poultry dishes. One dessert will be an apple strudel that Schwarzenegger has said his mother used to make for him.
In January, the rival Hard Rock Cafe filed a $1-billion lawsuit against Planet Hollywood, alleging that it conspired to force Hard Rock Cafe to sell its assets below market value by creating “a chain of highly publicized entertainment/music-themed restaurants . . . similar (to Hard Rock) but of substantially lower quality.”
The company filed a second, $200-million suit earlier this month, alleging that Planet Hollywood tried to obstruct Hard Rock’s plans to expand into Orange County.
Stallone dismissed the lawsuits as “jealousy.”
“Cinderella had a lot of ugly sisters, it didn’t stop her from going to the ball,” Stallone said of the Hard Rock chain. “I think the earmark of success is that if you don’t have a few lawsuits, you’re not doing well.”
Officials of Hard Rock Cafe refused to comment.
But industry consultant Janet Lowder said both restaurants could thrive in the county if the economy improves.
“People are going to be looking for the type of entertainment that Planet Hollywood and Hard Rock provide,” she said. “But if they are both opening in down markets, they will split the market share.”
She also cautioned that celebrities, while drawing crowds initially, often lose interest in restaurants after a year or so.
Even so, Stallone said, Planet Hollywood in Manhattan still attracts the in crowd.
“At first there was a lot of negative, kind of like, you might say, sour grapes going in New York, that stars would never go to Planet Hollywood,” he said. “They would be there for the initial opening and they would all fade.
“That’s just become absolutely dispelled, because what has happened is the food is good, and they don’t get hassled.”
