Despite massive hype and celebrity star-power,
90's chain Planet Hollywood didn't live up to its promise to conquer the
world. Here's what really happened to Planet Hollywood and where you can still find one.
Like many others, we've often viewed Planet Hollywood as the film and television equivalent
of the Hard Rock Cafe. And the comparison between the two themed restaurant chains isn't
a coincidence. Nor were the similarities lost on Hard Rock Cafe co-founder Peter Morton. After all,
Planet Hollywood's founder Robert Earl didn't just work for Hard Rock Cafe beforehand — he
was the CEO of the music-themed chain before launching his film-centric variation in 1991.
While Earl was indeed a high-ranking executive with Hard Rock before the
launch of Planet Hollywood, it wasn't his first foray into themed restaurants. Earl's
experience extended as far back as 1972, when, under his President Entertainment umbrella,
the British-born businessman created Beefeater, a medieval-themed theater restaurant in the U.K.,
and eventually the Earl of Sandwich chain. Earl eventually expanded to the U.S. where
he thrived in Florida's theme restaurant space until he ultimately merged with a
similar company in 1987 for which he netted a $63 million payday.
Robert Earl remains CEO of Planet Hollywood International as of May 2023,
and it seems he's as committed as ever to his movie-themed restaurant.
No creative endeavor may be entirely original in the 21st century, but there's a marked difference
between finding a new angle on a pre-existing concept and blatantly copying that idea wholesale.
It's tough to say where, precisely, Planet Hollywood falls on that spectrum. Yet, the
fact Planet Hollywood was founded by Robert Earl while he was still the CEO of Hard Rock Cafe makes
it tough to simply dismiss a 1992 lawsuit filed by Hard Rock Cafe against the competing chain.
In a 1993 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Earl said,
"It’s just a normal piece of competition — McDonald’s
and Burger King. It’s about as close a similarity, if that!”
But the owners of Hard Rock Cafe were unconvinced. The music-themed restaurant
chain and its co-founder Peter Morton even went so far as to describe its newfound competitor as
"similar but of substantially lower quality" in its antitrust suit against Planet Hollywood.
Hard Rock Cafe won the lawsuit and was awarded a multimillion dollar settlement. As of May 2023,
Hard Rock Cafe has dozens of open locations, while Planet Hollywood has fewer than 10
operating worldwide, so it looks like the Hard Rock beat its rival on all fronts.
The entire purpose of an establishment like Planet Hollywood is to provide guests with a
movie-themed experience like no other. In order to project an image of genuine star power and
blockbuster appeal, Planet Hollywood employed a number of the world's most famous movie stars
to promote the chain. But celebrities weren't only being paid to endorse the
restaurant. Many famous names were offered the chance to invest in Planet Hollywood as well.
Anyone who was around during Planet Hollywood's boom period is likely
aware of the chain's three major celebrity benefactors:
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Sylvester Stallone.
"What is a nice bunch of action heroes like you doing opening a burger joint?"
Their promotion of the business included attending grand openings
at all the new locations, usually while rocking Planet Hollywood swag.
And the three movie megastars weren't the only A-listers to sink their money
into the Planet Hollywood brand. Willis' then-wife Demi Moore,
as well as Oscar-winning actor and comedian Whoopi Goldberg were also part of the crew.
"This is fabulous. It's stupendous. It's colossal."
When your entire business model is based on famous films and you're being backed by some of
the biggest movie stars in the world, your opening night needs to live up to expectations. Luckily,
when Planet Hollywood's first location opened in New York City in November 1991,
it didn't disappoint. The restaurant's debut
was a star-studded evening that seemed to portend a great future.
Robert Earl and Planet Hollywood spared no expense when it came to the opening, which cost $750,000
to produce. The red carpet featured a who's who of famous actors and film legends from the early
1990s, including Michael J. Fox, Alec Baldwin, and Garry Marshall, among many others. And just
like every major premiere, the event drew an abundance of paparazzi and 10,000 excited fans.
"Now we're talking LA. I mean, now we're talking the stars."
In other words, the world was ready for Planet Hollywood,
and the restaurant made sure to live up to the hype, at least in the beginning.
When you think of a themed restaurant like Planet Hollywood, certain locations are a natural fit.
For instance, if you've got a popular vacation destination with plenty of tourist traffic,
then opening a major theme restaurant there is a no-brainer. We have to assume the Planet
Hollywood decision makers took this into consideration when it came to opening new
locations after its initial smashing success. Either way, the company was eager to expand,
so it opened new restaurants around the world throughout the 1990s.
If the restaurant had been able to maintain its early momentum,
there's a chance Planet Hollywood could have thrived long beyond the early 1990s. As it was,
the company's desire to grow seemed to take precedence over everything else,
almost as if they assumed Planet Hollywood's initial popularity would never diminish.
At its peak, the brand operated around 80 restaurants worldwide. But, as of May 2023,
dozens of Planet Hollywood locations have gone
under. It's obvious the business wasn't destined to take over the actual planet.
Realistically, one of the only ways a restaurant can grow and prosper
is by cultivating repeat business. Frankly, without the presence of diners who return to
an establishment again and again, there's no feasible path to long-term viability. Planet
Hollywood discovered this the hard way as business suffered a gradual downturn
throughout the 1990s. A lot of this could be attributed to Planet Hollywood's menu;
this big-time restaurant served some of the least satisfying food that we can remember.
Perhaps the company believed its reputation as a movie museum-adjacent establishment meant it
could shortchange the number one reason people go out to eat to begin with. Regardless of the
rationale behind its uninspiring menu, it's virtually impossible to pin Planet Hollywood's
lack of large-scale, long-term success on anything other than its lackluster food.
It's possible that the overall quality of Planet Hollywood's food has been upgraded
since the turn of the millennium. Then again, with such a subpar reputation,
it's tough to imagine Planet Hollywood's food being any better than it was once upon a time.
Obviously, there's more to a restaurant than the food on your plate. While the
importance of ambiance and service is hard to quantify, there's little incentive to return to
a restaurant like Planet Hollywood when the food is just plain boring or even bad. In that sense,
while the movie memorabilia on display at Planet Hollywood plays an essential role
in attracting customers, the fact that it massively outranked the food meant
the chain's costly 1990s expansion may have been doomed from the start.
And, thirty years later, the company may not have learned from its mistakes. As recently as 2020,
some guests at the Walt Disney World location found items like the wooden door Rose floats on,
that’s featured at the end of Titanic, far more enticing than the grub.
"I'll never let go, I promise."
Will Planet Hollywood ever decide to revamp its menu and focus on providing
a memorable culinary experience? We doubt it. But since it appears that
no one's going to the restaurant for the food, it has little incentive to do so.
Themed restaurants will always have a place in modern society. But that doesn't mean the
general public is ravenous for any and all themed restaurants to continue to exist.
Planet Hollywood became acutely aware of its limitations when it decided to diversify with
casinos, movie theaters, and even a Planet Hollywood Squares game show spinoff. These
new ideas fizzled as the 1990s wore on, with nothing but financial losses to show for it.
And then there were the offshoot brands dreamed up by Robert Earl and his team.
Do you remember Marvel Mania, the restaurant that opened in 1998 at Universal Studios in
Orlando? Of course you don't, just as you wouldn't recall the planned Times Square
location that never opened. What about the Official All-Star Cafe, which was set to do
for professional athletes what Planet Hollywood did for movie stars? It counted sports icons
like Tiger Woods and Wayne Gretzky among its celebrity endorsements and it still flamed out.
If there's a lesson to be taken from Planet Hollywood's unsuccessful attempts to conquer
the world, it's that it's important to know your limitations. Planet Hollywood remains
a small yet functioning company as of 2023. And if it stays true to its movie-loving roots, it's
possible that it could subsist that way for quite some time.
Celebrities will always be associated with Planet Hollywood. But the free-flowing
celebrity endorsements of the early-to-mid 1990s dwindled as the decade wore on,
causing many stars to turn away from the chain.
"Stallone! Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!"
It can't be entirely shocking to discover Planet Hollywood's cachet
with well-known actors diminished along with its fading corporate prowess. But even early
investor Arnold Schwarzenegger cut ties with Planet Hollywood in 2000, stating,
"It was lots of fun and very challenging to come up with and develop the celebrity
restaurant concept on an international level. Of course, I am disappointed that
the company did not continue with the success I had expected and hoped for."
Schwarzenegger's defection demonstrates how far the company had fallen by the turn of the century.
There is no Planet Hollywood without famous actors and actresses behind
it. So while the restaurant is unlikely to ever again match its stacked cohort
of celebrity investors from the '90s, it's still Planet Hollywood.
It would be unfair to claim a 1998 terrorist attack at the Cape Town,
South Africa Planet Hollywood contributed to the brand's
downward spiral — but it certainly didn't make the company's situation any better.
In August 1998, a pipe bomb exploded under a footrest in the bar of the aforementioned
location, killing two people. In addition, numerous patrons, including a 12-year-old
British girl, lost limbs in the explosion while many others were also seriously injured.
Responsibility for the act was claimed by an anti-American terrorist group calling themselves
Muslims Against Global Oppression. The group, later called People Against Gangsterism and Drugs,
said they planted the bomb in retaliation for U.S. military intervention in Sudan and Afghanistan.
At the time of the attack, the Cape Town Planet Hollywood had been open
for three months. The restaurant never reopened.
As many of us are aware, a company filing for bankruptcy doesn't necessarily mean that
the business is definitively doomed. More often than not,
claiming bankruptcy is merely an attempt to restructure a company's finances,
allowing it to move forward without crippling financial debts. Of course,
if a business files for bankruptcy twice within a three-year span — as was the case with Planet
Hollywood in 2001 — then the odds of it returning to its former glory become fairly improbable.
"It's lot to go through for a couple turkey burgers and a hat."
Now, when you consider the fact that some Planet Hollywood locations continue to
operate as of May 2023, it's clear that the chain's second bankruptcy didn't lead to its
demise. But it did signal the end of the themed restaurant's dreams of worldwide domination,
as it revamped and reduced its previous expectations.
By now, we've established that the so-very-'90s Planet Hollywood chain
is still in business as of May 2023. But it's not just the brand's standalone
restaurants that remain in operation in the post-COVID world. There are
also a few Planet Hollywood resorts and hotels still doing business out there.
A handful of Planet Hollywood restaurants continue to serve up movie memorabilia with
a side of fries, including one in Malta and another at Los Angeles International Airport.
And a Planet Hollywood restaurant appears to be scheduled to reopen in New York City,
though it's unclear when. Additionally, the company maintains a small group of
luxury hotels and resorts, including locations in Cancun, Mexico, and Utorda Beach in Goa, India.
In other words, it's still possible to get your Planet Hollywood fix. If you're so inclined,
you can simply head to the nearest location and savor your chicken tenders in close proximity to
classic movie posters and props. You may even have the chance to size up that famous door
from Titanic to determine, once and for all, if there was, in fact, room for two on board.