LOS ANGELES—Film buffs flocked into Los Angeles-area theaters this weekend, eager to turn the page on the pandemic that forced them to spend a year watching movies from home.

“I didn’t even care what movie was going to play. I just wanted to get back to the movies,” said Ken Ruiz, 52, a computer programmer and part-time stand-up comic who, on Friday, bought a ticket to see Walt Disney Co. ’s latest animated film “Raya and the Last Dragon” at the company’s famed Hollywood theater El Capitan.

The theater, a historic treasure that opened in 1926, is on one of Los Angeles’ busiest thoroughfares, Hollywood Boulevard. At it, and other theaters in the city, masks are required, spaces have been sanitized, concession vendors sell everything prepackaged from behind plexiglass and capacity is limited to 25% or 100 people, whichever is less.

For months, executives at Hollywood’s biggest studios and theater chains said that when big-city markets like Los Angeles and New York reopened, combined with a successful rollout of a Covid-19 vaccine, it would help revive the theater business.

Now, after theaters in New York opened two weeks ago and those in Los Angeles this weekend, the industry will get a look at how desperate moviegoers might be to return. Pre-pandemic, Los Angeles accounted for about 8% of domestic moviegoing—America’s largest metropolitan theatrical market—according to media measurement company Comscore.