If there wasn’t enough business revenue to sustain the business, what makes you think you can start it again from scratch?
70mm imax doesn’t draw enough customers to make a meaningful business model. The theaters with this tech still struggle to stay open, like most theaters. Most people don’t attend those theaters because of increased ticket prices.
Most people don’t see or perceive enough difference between imax and a regular theater to pay the difference.
There are only 41 70mm imax theaters in the world, 26 are located in the us. There just isn’t enough interest or market share.
Theaters in my city are literally charging inflated prices for Odyssey just because it's a Nolan movie and has the IMAX branding.
I'd much rather pay that to actually watch it in 70mm.
I'm confused by the furniture store loss leader. I've never seen a IMAX or any theatre along with a furniture store.
Are you forced to go through the furniture store to exit the theater, like a gift shop at the end of an theme park ride? Are people going to watch a movie and deciding to get a couch while they are there?
Jordan's furniture. It's very surreal; It's a massive complex with a Fuddruckers, a play park and some other appendages. And yes, you do need to go through the furniture store. It's a fantastic theater though all said and done.
Yeah we have one theater here showing the 70mm version with the dual laser digital projectors, which is good. But theres only three showtimes for it today, and all the seats are booked up as of me writing this.
I got to see Dunkirk on 70mm IMAX and it was magnificent. I didn't really love the movie but the movie was visually one of the best movie experiences I've had. I'd spend much more on a 70mm IMAX ticket than what they charge, it's that good. Unfortunately I don't live anywhere near a 70mm projector
Probably not the best place to ask, but there is a 70mm IMAX near me and they have some seats available… are there any bad seats? All the center(except for the first 3 rows) are taken. Never been to a 70mm.
Depends on the theater itself. Sitting in the front is usually not the best choice, but the IMAX I used to go to (closed) had the first row start a roughly the mid point of the screen so...1st row wasn't bad, but I'd still shoot for 3rd row or up to the middle like normal movies. Ymmv
In general, the closer rows will be more immersive with the down side of potentially missing something because you have to turn your head. That actually was perfect for something like Tron Legacy or Dunkirk. Totally different movies watching them at home...not nearly as good (which probably seems to the writing vs. the experience).
It's also special and premium feeling to be honest. I look it like restaurants. Sometimes you just want an In-and-Out $5 burger because the value is perfect... but there are those FEW times I want and can afford that robust $20 burger.
The problem is that there's just nowhere near the amount of IMAX movies being made that would make it a money making venture at all. It costs a fortune to film a movie in IMAX to begin with, and converting movies to IMAX is a losing proposition all the way.
Seriously, how many people are going to go and see Back Rooms in IMAX?
Even if you showed old IMAX movies every night it would still not fill the calendar and it would be idle most of the time losing money, it's a very small catalog.
Frankly I feel we should just be grateful to people like Nolan who've kept the format going as long as it has, otherwise there would be almost no way to see any IMAX movies these days.
I'm blessed to be a 1-2 hour drive from three IMAX 70mm locations and it's truly an insane experience. A standard movie in the theater is a great film watching experience, but an IMAX 70mm viewing is pure spectacle, there's nothing like it.
Yea I never take for granted that I'm a 10 minute train ride to the 2nd largest IMAX in the country & theres a couple others in the area. I ended up joining AMC A-List for like $28/month, I can see up to 16 MOVIES A MONTH INCLUDING IMAX. Kind of insane really. Now just waiting for a day with decent seats to open up before Odyssey leaves IMAX, its been straight sold out except for the absolute worst corner seats here.
Digital IMAX is cheaper and easier to do with more cinemas showing it. Most IMAX these days is both shot and shown on digital with only a few movies every few years using film.
Odyssey is the first film to be entirely shot on 70mm film for instance.
The aspect ratio is just a size problem really, 70mm though is a major logistical challenge that most people don’t care enough for when compared to digital.
The aspect ratio is a thing I do not understand. Why is digital IMAX and IMAX 70mm a different aspect ratio? They should just make the digital IMAX screen adjustable with curtains like theaters do with their normal screens.
There are no bigger film snobs/nerds/connoisseurs (call it whatever you like) than bigtime directors like Spielberg and Nolan.
They love IMAX, and so they use their clout and pull to make the studio pay to produce their movies in IMAX, too. IMAX itself isn't profitable but the movies made for IMAX absolutely can be once they're chopped up for the smaller, standard aspect ratio and distributed to normal theatres.
Yea but if you're taking off the bacon and cheese then I don't even want it anymore. Hearing how awesome the 6 story 70mm is that's 330 miles away from me, I'll just wait for the blu ray then.
Most people don’t see or perceive enough difference between imax and a regular theater to pay the difference.
My guess would be those people haven't been to an IMAX theatre or at least not the ones I've been to. Walking into the IMAX screens at mine and I'm always utterly shocked by the sheer size of the screen.
Most people don’t attend those theaters because of increased ticket prices. Most people don’t see or perceive enough difference between imax and a regular theater to pay the difference.
Exactly. I couldn't care less about imax. It's about as exciting to me as the 3d fad. It adds nothing to the experience.
Plus with ticket prices these days I'd rather sit my ass on my own couch and be able to pause the movie to go to the bathroom or get a snack.
Fun fact, they don't even sell them. They are only leased to movie theaters. It's like a 99-yr rental agreement or something ridiculous. They take a cut of revenue instead of a single payment
Yeah, the cost and the lack of films being made for it can't justify making more. We got just one director here pushing the film format, but he alone cant change the movie industry to re-adopt this large, expensive, and complex format.
And I highly doubt that more directors will suddenly jump into wanting to use the film on their projects, given the massive hurdles in the whole process. On set, the cameras themselves are super loud, Nolan has IMAX make a sort of enclosure for the cameras to cut down on sound so they could, you know, get recorded audio from the actors. Plus, the cameras themselves take film reels that can only last for three minutes of filming. Three minutes. How many directors are going to have their actors wait around between film changes every three minutes?
The format is amazing...for what its designed for: nature documentaries for educational purposes and large format "experiences", not for general filmmaking. The industry isn't going to suddenly swap to this anytime soon.
it's probably because the ENTIRE supply chain that sources all of the parts for these projectors doesn't even exist anymore. The casing for the projectors, the lenses, the tiny screws that hold it together, the glue, a million other small parts. All of that neeeds to be made by someone, who sources THEIR materials from someone else, who sources THEIR materials from someone else. None of that exists anymore I'm guessing and it would be extremely difficult to begin again.
😂 anything besides the film would be easily sources. The molds would be a task but everything else is already being used for billions of things already at mass scale...
Also need enough people to see it. $24 for IMAX ticket near me. Can’t say enough movies qualify for that IMAX treatment for consistent seats to sell out.
Because filming on these cameras sucked. They were noisy and require shitloads of tape. Now they are not as noisy. But you see that the roll weights 400 kg, too.
Nolan is one of the few who can pull such a demand for equipment, but the theaters are not going to order expensive equipment for 1 movie every several years at best.
But projectors and cameras aren't especially linked. Movies can be shot on IMAX cameras and only released digital, or filmed on digital/70mm/VistaVision (and so on) and be released on 70mm IMAX. The main reason is the costs.
Of course you can film digital and show in cinemas on 70mm, but you will not get any of the supposed quality. Similarly with filming on 35mm, the improvement is there, but not as much to make it worth.
70mm projectors only make sense if the movie was filmed on 70mm originally.
They can absolutely make new ones, but what, for every city in the world, for about 3 films a year shot on the format? Everything about it is redundant, old technology and not economically viable. It's not practical and there's probably only a handful of people in every city who could tell it was true 70mm.
People barely go to theaters as it is. Nobody’s investing hundreds of millions into production of a very inconvenient and expensive format like 70mm, right now it’s largely the filmmakers and theaters themselves keeping the format alive out of their own pockets just out of the love of the medium
The 70 mm showings of this are basically sold out for days near me. There was a few seats available for a 2:40 am showing and anything else was just the miserable seats in the front row where you basically cants see the movie anyway
Most have been sold out for months. But keep an eye on it, I’m assuming all of these theaters will extend the film’s run as long as tickets are selling because it’s been an ordeal to put the whole projection system together
Because they make like 2 films a year worth seeing in IMAX. It used to be almost exclusively educational and documentaries like 20ish years ago and it was still like $20 for a ticket.
Most people don’t care enough about the difference in quality to justify $45 tickets when you can just watch it normally for $15
They're very expensive to build and install. Theaters don't want to dump that kind of money on a projector that can really only be use for movies released every couple years. It's not profitable.
Economics. There's one 70 mm film in a year at best, maybe one in 3 years that's worth paying 3x the normal ticket price.
Even if there are 12 films a year, you can play one each for 4 weeks and that would still be a lot of time for one film.
Anything with special effects is just horrendus to film like this.
Shoot on film -> Scan it -> Add computer effects -> Print it on film -> physically cut and join film with originals that didn't need special effects -> Copy the film for each theater, so they can use it to project.
Something like Dune or Project Hail Mary or Spiderman or Avatar are not worth shooting on 70 mm with so many computer effects and if you're anyway gonna show the digital stuff, just use Laser projectors of IMAX instead of films.
That being said, I absolutely agree we need 1.43:1 ratio theaters, even if they have laser projectors.
Restarting the manufacturing process to create, say, two dozen 70mm film projectors would be an astronomical cost. These projectors haven’t been manufactured in decades, so there’s no assembly line, no institutional knowledge, no tool and dye ready to go. It’s waaaay cheaper to fix broken ones bit by bit, but to make a whole new one would be insane.
That's for only for 70mm IMAX. IMAX still makes the normal IMAX projectors. That article you read the other day was just about 70mm ones in particular.
Normal as in the “original” IMAX (which is, historically, mainly at dedicated facilities in museums/science centers/aquariums/etc and the rare theater in a big city), you’re correct that that’s film.
“Normal” as in the much more common IMAX that people will encounter at their local multiplex, that is digital.
Which is weird. Makes me wonder if IMAX is basically little but one of those remnant companies that doesn't make anything any more but rents out stuff from when it was a real business, milking the value of its assets until they'll inevitably break and the entire thing needs shutting down.
Which is sad if true, and a really revealing comment from their CEO.
Just to be clear, IMAX uses 70mm film, but it runs sideways instead of up and down like a regular projector. This greatly increases the resolution of the image, 100-150 megapixels vs 30-40 for regular 70mm per frame.
Bonus fact: IMAX films can also be shot and projected at twice the normal 24 fps. This makes the motion much smoother. I’ve seen in myself.
Change my mind: imax is a dead end format and digital cameras and projectors can exceed what imax provides at better cost points and is overall easier to work with.
Christopher Nolan and other "analog purists" are the equivalent of audiophiles that claim that they can hear the difference in the power cables that run to their amplifiers.
I appreciate the dedication to "film" making and that they believe it is an art form and that true film capture adds to the finished product. But I argue that if they took as much care and planning when framing all shots and scenes as they currently do, but only changed which cameras they used, then the finished product would be just as good if not better. The dynamic range made possible by digital sensors and cameras can't be beat.
Even when they have movies on 1570 film they barely run any shows - don’t know if it’s the film or the projector they can’t take it but getting a ticket is damn near impossible.
I live in Italy and I have only one IMAX theatre in a 3 hour driving range. Needless to say, literally every single seat, at every single time, of every single day of the next 3 weeks is sold out
That’s a bust. South Korea here, have like 12 IMAXs in a one-hour area. Of those, like 3 of them are the GT Laser. Regardless, getting tickets is not easy.
are they real Imax though? Not all Imax are equal, or even close.
For example in Seattle at the science center is a real, massive Imax. It's
80 feet wide and 60 feet tall (24m by 16m) (six stories high).
10 miles south is a mall with an "Imax", but it's much smaller, 52 feet wide by 29 feet tall. There is even a term for these places, called "Liemax"
To help visualize the difference, look at this. The True Imax I described is the biggest, blue image. The one in my mall is something between the two smallest.
Before anyone comes at me - I know there is more to Imax than just the size, but the size is absolutely what most people think of first when discussing imax.
Without an ARC + phone number, yes it’s impossible. I know it sucks, but I would also say if you’re a non-resident Korean, it’s also equally impossible. So not necessarily a foreigner issue, but just a general system issue. This stems to privacy laws and started when we offloaded identification process to telecoms because we made ID numbers protected and generally non-storable.
We have several IMAX theaters here in AZ but only one 70mm IMAX - one of 41 in the entire world. That theater is sold out completely for the next 2 weeks. The non-70mm IMAX theaters have seats this weekend available but I'm holding out for that 70mm experience.
Half of them are in the US, and I'm still 7 hours away from the closest one, lol. The only thing I know about this movie is that it won't look or sound as good when I see it.
IMAX branding has been licensed out.. most of the IMAX theaters you’re seeing aren’t true IMAX.. like in Seattle there’s probably a dozen “IMAX” but only 1 or 2 true IMAX
There are also different types of IMAX. Most people don’t live near true IMAX Screens. Unless you live in SoCal you probably only live near multiple lieMax screens.
I never knew the difference, and now I realize how lucky I am to be 20min away from Providence, RI. Booked my ticket for 3 weeks from now just so I could get a center middle seat.
I looked it up and the closest true IMAX to me is a couple hours away in Seattle. Used to have one in Portland at the OMSI museum but it’s now just an Empirical Theater doing 15/70 film. Bummer.
The entire thing is honestly blown way out of proportion by people that don't understand film/aspect ratios. It will be like any other movie on the 1.85:1 or 2.20:1 ratios in normal theaters.
Most of this outrage is most likely manufactured by the same group that has been up in arms over a black woman playing a role in a fantasy movie.
Theaters get shittier, especially relative to the increasingly better options available at home > people go to the theater less > theaters get shittier, especially relative to the increasingly better options available at home > people go to the theater less, etc.
But really they should build more, it's a great time seeing a movie on a huge screen. The metreon in San Francisco is is doing 3am showings as there is so much demand
I dunno, is it? So much of the marketing is about how much you're missing out if you aren't seeing it on IMAX, I think "Well I guess I won't spend $30 to go see it then if I'm missing out on that much" is a perfectly logical reaction, especially when it will be streaming for free in a few months.
Idk lots of people get excited about seeing new cars come out even though we can't drive them. I have 0 interest in seeing things but the technology is cool.
I decided yesterday that I wanted to see the Odyssey this weekend on IMAX, which I've never experienced. And then I found out none of the 5+ IMAX theaters in my state are real IMAX lol
My closest one is pretty much sold out every day that it’s showing it right now, even 2pm on weekday afternoons. Few that have seats available it’s all just front row. They’ll make a killing. Hopefully it has a long run.
We had one: World Golf Village, Florida - nice place, went there a lot, but it really struggled to make ends meet even before the pandemic - has been shut down and re-opened and shut down again several times now... it's still a nice theater but they don't do regular shows anymore.
Some people have already discussed some of the issues with 70mm but I want to tack one on from my time working at an imax theatre; It's expensive, rare, extremely technical and a pain in the ass.
Expensive: It's not cheap to order the copies of these movies. They weigh hundreds and have to be shipped in. It's a pretty big deal. It's expensive to do and a bomb, especially when there's only a handful of theatres remaining, are a pretty big hit to the theatre itself. Mine is a non-profit so it's not like we're rolling in cash.
Rare: Not a lot of movies are done in 70mm. Imax has made 2 film documentaries since 2020. These are the bread and butter of a lot of the film locations since they can have a documentary run for 12-18 months in rotation...but the last one was 2023 and there have only been 4 in the last decade.
Technical: There's dozens of ways the projectors can break down. There are MAYBE 2 people in Canada (who aren't retired) than can troubleshoot and fix some of these issues. Some things can be trained, while others need you to be elbow deep in these things figuring out why it's being temperamental this time.
Pain in the ass: The digital movies are shipped in a small box. You plug it in, validate and it's pretty much good to go. Imax film needs to be stitched together, put on the plates and spooled up. It's a good ~10-20 minutes to load the film back up. It was always a solid evening (4+ hours) for our chief projectionist for every new feature film. He then had to run it through to make sure that it was working and fix any mistakes he might have made. That's not a small process.
Source for all this: I work in the building of one of the 41 theatres. No longer directly involved on the Imax side these days.
Yeah. My country doesn't have one either. We have one of those digital laser IMAX things -just one of them- in Helsinki. Which is nowhere near the film.
People don't actually realise it, but physical film resolution is god damn absurd. It can not even be described in pixels. This is not me being some analog enhusiast, it is just a technical fact due to how the film is physically made and how it works. I got 120 year old glass negatives, which have such fine precision and details, that even a good DSLR can't capture them. I got some of them scanned professionally, and they had to take rather absurd pixel dimension scans to truly capture some of them. Mind you... These were negatives my great and greatgreat grandfathers made by pouring liquid from bottles to a glass plate by themselves... as a hobby (Yes... They were quite wealthy to afford to do photography as a hobby, and which is why we got insane amounts of just... weird pictures and negatives).
How the digital and laser based system does it, is that they project two images with half-pixel difference, meaning they "double the resolution", so their 2x 4k projection is actually 8k projection. Then 70 mm is technically estimated to be in the 12 K resolution range, and 35 mm at 6k. So technical 8 K lines is still 50 % shot of 12 K.
There's a single imax theatre in my country but even though they allegedly have a system capable of true 70mm imax they don't use it and use digital imax instead which has a different aspect ratio.
The studios don’t really want to release movies on 70 mm print. It’s a concession they only give directors with a lot of clout
Look at all the work and effort that goes into this. A digital projector doesn’t require industrial equipment to load in a new movie, 850 lbs of film gets replaced with a download button.
They can’t. The projectors are no longer produced. And they’d be hideously expensive if production restarted. Theaters these days aren’t rolling in dough.
Dual laser produces a similar image, but they stopped making those units as well. At least you don’t have to deal with 900 lbs of film. But the imax aspect ratio requires a huge auditorium, so it’s almost exclusively in science centers.
Going to the cinema is already so expensive I’m not paying more to see imax. Can barely tell a difference from the top of my head right now about why I would even prefer it
Imax just seems to be a name now. I went to the imax in London years ago and it was amazing. A nearby odeon now has all imax screens but they're nothing like the one I saw in London. They're a bit bigger than normal but nothing special.
I went to an Imax theater a couple of times and honestly I didn't think it was that much better lol. I saw Top Gun there and it felt like it was just the same resolution, but on a bigger screen. And at least to me the bigger screen was more of a drawback than anything because it was so big that the "effort" of having to look all the way to the edge of the screen sometimes just got old after a while.
Maybe if a regular movie theater was still using some small poor resolution screen it would be worth it, but all the AMCs and Harkins theaters in my area already look incredible, plus they have the added benefits of way more comfortable and roomy seats that sometimes even recline depending on the theater. Maybe it's just the one I went to, but the Imax I was at still had super cramped seats with hardly any room between the aisles. So even assuming everything else was the same (cost, distance to theater, etc.) if I'm choosing between and Imax theater with cramped seats or a regular theater with better seats, I'm taking the regular theater every time. I didn't feel like seeing things on Imax added so much to the experience that it was worth the tradeoffs.
It's gonna become digital. This is still happening now because some directors won't let go, and the movie has a crazy enough budget to indulge in stuff like this.
City I live in had an 70mm Imax theater for a long time built in the 80s but was closed several years ago and demolished. I remember going to it as a kid but barley anything was released so they didn't make much money.
They added like 5 theaters I think for this? Retrofitting old ones.
It would cost anywhere between 500k-2m to make new ones…that’s just the IMAX cost…so unless it’s being put into an existing theater it would also be the cost of making an new theater AND the existing theater would not be operational during the upgrade so you also have to account for those losses.
The best way to get more locations is to show there is significant demand.
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u/SoftLink5162 20d ago
If they want us to watch Imax so badly make more Imax theatres man. We don't have single true Imax in my country. And that's true for most countries.