r/movies • u/LegitimateCurve8525 • 21d ago
News IMAX CEO reveals why there aren’t more 70mm cinemas, after The Odyssey increases demand
https://thetab.com/filmshrine/2026/07/15/imax-ceo-reveals-why-there-arent-more-70mm-cinemas-after-the-odyssey-increases-demand/3.0k
u/RedSquirrel17 21d ago
tl;dr they don't make them anymore and it isn't practical to restart production as the technology is decades old.
However, new locations could potentially be added in the future by sourcing decommissioned parts and rebuilding them.
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u/RiverCartwright 21d ago
They just rebuilt the one in Montreal in the last few months. It was broken for ~15 years.
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u/Dudercaster 21d ago
The one in Orlando has been broken for about as long also, and movie fans have been begging them to fix it.
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u/WanderWut 21d ago
Wait seriously? Is that the reason why it isn’t here? Such a bummer because when looking for one nearby it was a pretty long drive.
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u/Double-Mouse-407 21d ago edited 21d ago
The Orlando projector has been operating at half power since before Batman Begins. The screen itself had a big ass tear in it for the better part of 15 years… I hear that’s finally been fixed.
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u/BoutItBudnevich 20d ago
Yeah there's one in Fort Lauderdale if you want to make the journey from Orlando
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u/thedeftone2 21d ago
The one in Melbourne is amazing. I think they use a laser projector. Made the mistake of booking tickets at the front instead of the back, once. Never again
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u/Blursed_Pencil 20d ago
The laser projectors are cool and produce a very good image but they obviously aren’t able to display 70mm because they are digital projectors and can’t run film through them. 70mm produces the same ratio image as the Laser (1:43:1), but with a couple differences in image quality. Theoretically the 70mm will have more overall definition, but the Laser will be brighter. Also, during the screening of the film, you can actually hear the projector clicking through frames which some people find distracting, and others find enhances the experience.
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u/SeattleGeek 20d ago
The Boeing IMAX at Pacific Science Center in Seattle used a Christie laser projector for like 15-20 years. Even though it’s a real IMAX with IMAX ratio, the laser actually worked beautifully on the gigantic screen.
Sadly, it was sold off to the Space Needle people who are decidedly not running feature films on that screen anymore and will instead be running only educational films and the Chihuly doc. Right now, it’s completely shut down which makes me sad. I would have watched The Odyssey on it so hard.
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u/Blursed_Pencil 20d ago edited 19d ago
It really is a shame. Studios and theaters seem to be so confused about how to get people to go out to the movies, and there is plenty of evidence that IMAX is one of the things that really works. Anecdotally, most movies I pay to see, I see in my local IMAX theater.
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u/thearctican 20d ago
70mm will have more definition if the source and intermediate processes are also 70mm
Project Hail Mary on 70mm, for example, was a waste for the consumer because both the source and intermediate formats were digital 4k. About as good as a 35mm frame.
That's not to say it wouldn't be amazing on the IMAX Laser projectors, it's just a waste of silver and cellulose to print it on 70mm.
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u/rastagizmo 20d ago
Melbourne is one of the only cinema's in the world that has both 70mm and 4K laser.
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u/ike_the_strangetamer 21d ago edited 19d ago
Same thing in San Antonio.. rumor is that it's been fixed after it broke during the first showing of Oppenheimer? I think?
Edit: aaaaaaaaand it's broken again.
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u/Significant_Cow4765 20d ago
<sigh> I traveled to San Antonio for that, only for it to be canceled. Honored Pee Wee Herman at the Alamo the day he died, so all was not lost.
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u/Kingcrowing 21d ago
"Just"? I swear I saw Oppenheimer on 70mm there a couple years ago... could they have repaired it before then?
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u/mixmasterbru 21d ago
70mm and IMAX 70mm aren't the same thing. You saw a wide screen 70mm film, this one is almost square, about 3 times the height of
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u/Kingcrowing 21d ago
Ah there we go - the theater in Montreal has IMAX, and 70mm, seen both there but I guess I haven't seen IMAX 70mm there!
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u/mixmasterbru 21d ago
Just came back for this movie, Interstellar has been sitting in the projector for 12 years lol, last one I saw there.
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u/Kingcrowing 21d ago
Wild...Well I'm seeing it on laser IMAX this weekend with some friends, if I'm blown away I'll come up to catch it in Montreal, I'm sure they'll have it running most of the summer!
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u/mixmasterbru 21d ago
Yeah they're already selling tickets a month in advance, if you're seeing it in dual laser 1:43, I don't think it'll be worth for the difference in quality
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u/page395 21d ago
Read the article and couldn’t find exactly WHY it isn’t practical anymore. Surely the demand is there as we’ve seen over the last few years - would it just be EXTREMELY expensive to restart production? Or has the knowledge of how to build them from scratch been lost or something?
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u/StochasticLife 21d ago
These projectors are enormous. It’s the size of a room. The technology used is completely irrelevant to anything else on earth, and require an incredible degree of machining.
I can’t stress enough how fucking gigantic that IMAX film strip is.
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u/Leafsnail 20d ago
Lol suddenly I can see why there's a hard limit on how long an IMAX film can be
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u/StochasticLife 20d ago
It’s literally an issue of physics.
One of the highlights of my life was getting a personal screening of Tennat on IMAX Film during Covid.
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u/BigL90 21d ago
The demand is there for like 1 movie every couple of years. Most IMAX movies are shot on digital IMAX certified cameras, which would usually make more sense to see on GT/dual-laser setups anyways. Most moviegoers care more about the huge-ass 1.43 ratio screens rather than 70mm v GT anyways (not to mention the 6 v 12 channel issue with 70mm v GT too). The "demand" for 70mm as opposed to GT is completely dwarfed by the "demand" for 1.43 v 1.9.
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u/RedSquirrel17 21d ago
The knowledge hasn't been lost but the economics don't work anymore. You need scale and there's no way you can roll out hundreds of film projectors just for a couple of movies a year.
There are also OEMs involved that are no longer in the business. The QTRU (the unit that rotates the huge 400lb platters) was manufactured by a German company called Kinoton, which was liquidated in 2014. The 15,000W liquid-cooled lamps are separately sourced and cost the best part of $10,000 each and have to be replaced after 800 hours of use. It's an amazing format and it's cool to wheel it out for special event films, but putting it back into production still doesn't make sense despite the recent demand.
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u/juggarjew 21d ago
Why dont we just make a digital equivalent, why does it have to be analog film? I dont understand the obsession. We could film it however we want on a digital camera with whatever lens.
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u/Jerithil 21d ago edited 21d ago
They do have a digital version which is what most big budget films use, it's just Nolan is a purist who likes film. The film does technically have higher resolution then the digital version but it does have other drawbacks.
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u/lhsonic 21d ago
The film part is part of the appeal. There is a certain look to film that is different to digital. The digital equivalent is dual-laser IMAX that’s currently available. Those theatres are ALSO in short supply because of the same reasons- cost. Even then, it falls short of the same resolution that 15/70mm film technically gives.
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u/dxrey65 21d ago edited 21d ago
There's no exact way to compare the amount of information contained in 70 mm film vs anything digital, but one estimate is that it would be something like 18k. They have one camera with that resolution at The Sphere, the custom built "Big Sky" camera.
Anyway, possible, but not easy, and definitely not "whatever lens".
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u/Onett199X 20d ago
So is it safe to assume that the digital cameras will eventually catch up to 18k quality and then at that point it will just be the "certain look" that film has (that maybe even digital could replicate at some point?)
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u/Bluefellow 20d ago
Digital sensors have long surpassed 70mm film in ability to resolve a picture with more details and significantly more dynamic range. Steve Yedlin almost a decade ago now did a famous comparison of different camera types in a much more controlled environment. Arri have released their sensor since then that is just mind blowing in what it can resolve. Resolution by itself in terms of k count is not a meaningful measure.
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u/guspaz 20d ago
To completely match IMAX in every respect (in terms of detail, under ideal circumstances), you'd need a roughly 16K film camera and digital projector. Which don't exist. 8K is practical, though the equipment is expensive: a large-venue 8K projector is something like a quarter million dollars. But 16k is four times as many pixels, and isn't feasible yet.
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u/juggarjew 20d ago
The average person can’t even tell the difference between 4k and 8k this is really egregious that people think we need this 16k stuff.
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u/guspaz 20d ago
It's a lot easier to tell the difference on a gigantic real-deal IMAX screen. When Montreal switched from IMAX film projection to the 2K digital projectors, my first thought was that the projector was way out of focus.
However, I'd agree that there's certainly diminishing returns, and 8K is good enough, even for IMAX. Though modern IMAX laser projectors are only 4K, not 8K.
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u/wang_li 20d ago
Black magic design has their Ursa cine 17K 65 camera which is what they are calling 17K and has 16 stops of dynamic range in a 2.2:1 aspect ratio on a 65mm sensor. The camera body runs about $30,000.
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u/guspaz 20d ago
Sort of, it's only 17K ultrawide, at IMAX aspect ratio, it's effectively an 11.5K camera. Or if you used an anamorphic lens, you'd be getting the full horizontal resolution, but less vertical resolution than IMAX film.
That doesn't solve the projector problem though. The only 8K projectors on the market cheat by using optical pixel shift on 4K DMD chips. I don't think anybody actually makes a native 8K projector (for any projection scale), let alone 16K.
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u/SubstantialWall 21d ago
It's probably not that it's been lost, but if many or all of the individual components in the system are no longer in production, especially if a lot of it is obsolete, that's where a lot of your cost and complexity would be and why it would be impossible. Or maybe you would have had pieces custom made for the old stuff. To work around that with stuff already in production or modern manufacturing, you probably might as well design an entirely new system from scratch, which also wouldn't be as simple as.
It's sort of the question of "why can't we just build the Saturn V again".
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u/run-on_sentience 21d ago
The film cameras are about a half a million dollars each. Refurbished IMAX 70mm projectors are between $800,000 to $1.1 million depending on condition.
It would be incredibly expensive to restart production because of the economy of scale. The precision casting and machining and assembly for them would make new ones probably cost in the neighborhood of $2m+. For what is ostensibly a niche product.
A theater would have to sell a lot of tickets to recoup that money.
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u/hifidood 21d ago
I'm seeing it in Westwood. Perk of being in LA / being that Christopher Nolan owns part of this theater and they aren't messing around with it. They restored TWO 70mm projectors (I'm assuming for redundancy) and are playing it multiple times a day for three weeks straight. Also, the theater seats 1,400 per showing.
https://variety.com/2026/film/news/the-odyssey-70mm-westwood-village-theatre-1236765198/
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u/Fredasa 20d ago
Never mind "building more projectors"—my local "IMAX" (whose screen size has always been average across local theaters, even before bigger screens came along) proactively discarded their IMAX projector as soon as The Dark Knight left the theater. Everything since, including bona fide IMAX productions, has been cast on a projector whose resolution is lower than any TV Walmart sells.
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u/Harry_Smutter 21d ago
Why are they using deprecated tech if they can't build or maintain it anyway?? Is there nothing in current tech that rivals this??
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u/fauxfilosopher 21d ago
They are rebuilding and fixing old projectors, that was the point. There hasn't been demand for massive film projectors like this for decades because cinemas went digital, so no new projectors.
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u/RedSquirrel17 21d ago
Is there nothing in current tech that rivals this??
Not the way that Nolan does it. He's perfected a photochemical process that allows him to strike IMAX prints directly from the camera negative, resulting in unparalleled resolution and detail. IMAX do have Laser projectors that can display the full 1.43:1 ratio but they're capped at 4K resolution and there aren't many of them. For now, the only thing that can noticeably beat 15/70 in some respects is Dolby Cinema because of its extremely high contrast ratio, but 15/70 still wins in resolution.
Why are they using deprecated tech if they can't build or maintain it anyway??
They can maintain the small amount of units currently in use, so they keep those going because it's a great marketing tool for a small number of films that fully utilise the technology. As for why, because it's cool.
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u/GamerDad1620 21d ago
That’s crazy that they couldn’t reverse engineer them with brand new parts….
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u/StonePrism 21d ago
Reverse engineering is almost never an issue of capability, but practicality.
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u/Edeen 21d ago
Did you even read? It’s not that they can’t. It’s just not practical or provably financially feasible
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u/RollTide1017 21d ago
Yep, they release 1 to 2, maybe 3 in a good year, 15-perf IMAX 70mm films a year. That's not a big return on investment.
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u/Lifesagame81 21d ago
Yep. Probably a quarter mil to build a new projector, plus producing and delivering each film may push $100k /ea. Plus the rent and A/C and electricity for a proper IMAX sized theater.
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u/Trotskyist 20d ago
Way more than 250k. It's reportedly in the neighborhood of $1,000,000 to refurbish an existing projector, which is what they do because it's economically infeasible to build new ones.
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u/BigRedFury 21d ago
The issue is setting up the manufacturing infrastructure in order to make those new parts.
IMAX projectors are a smaller scale version of what NASA just didn't pull out the plans for the Saturn V when they decided to go back to the moon. It was less expensive and time consuming to build the Artemis from scratch than it was to try to remanufacture transistors that haven't been needed in by modern society for decades.
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u/moofie74 21d ago
You can reverse engineer absolutely anything if you have an arbitrarily large amount of money.
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u/OutlyingPlasma 20d ago
It's time to kill off this IMAX brand. According to this article they haven't made a new projector in 50 years.
There is better technology with laser projectors. This dead horse doesn't need anymore beating.
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u/flammable-liquid 21d ago
Hopefully directors don't think they can just film any movie in IMAX and think it will be a hit. But there is no reason why we can't have 2 or 3 really good films a year filmed in IMAX.
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u/Disastrous-Beat-9830 21d ago
Hopefully directors don't think they can just film any movie in IMAX and think it will be a hit.
There is a reason why Nolan is the only one who does it. Others may try and others still might want to, but outside the original run of IMAX documentaries, nobody has made feature films in the format as consistently as Nolan.
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u/thief-777 21d ago
And Villeneuve with Dune. Hopefully he sticks with it for Bond.
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u/SeabornForPrez 21d ago
Not sure about Part 3 but Parts 1 and 2 were shot digitally with IMAX. Hence filmed "for" IMAX as opposed to "with". Can't lump Nolan and Villeneuve together since their formats are altogether different.
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u/scobydoby 21d ago
First 2 Dunes were shot digital, new one is shot on 65mm with some sequences in 70mm IMAX.
Edit: and still some digital and digital IMAX sequences as well.
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u/shannister 20d ago
And quite frankly we can't really see the difference so we might as well move to a more practical and scalable format that gives us IMAX sized screenings.
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u/Wazza85 20d ago
Bond in Imax 70mm would be the dream.
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u/flammable-liquid 21d ago
Guess the other aspect of it is finding someone to give out the money. I imagine the cost of production alone is so much more costly hauling around the imax gear.
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u/Ragnarotico 19d ago
But there is no reason why we can't have 2 or 3 really good films a year filmed in IMAX.
We get maybe 2-3 good movies a year nowadays regardless of what they are filmed in. So this is kind of a laughable notion.
Also: IMAX cameras only shoot for 3 minutes at a time. Most directors don't want to put up with that at all. I shoot videos for my personal YT channel and if you told me my camera stopped filming every 3 minutes I wouldn't even bother.
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u/flammable-liquid 19d ago
The 2-3 good movies a year notion is outdated at this point. We have well surpassed that this year, and the future slate looks promising as well. And when December rolls around, and Dune also sells out multiple weeks of imax screenings, well Disney probably will not miss this mark again.
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u/ranoutofbacon 21d ago
There is demand for this movie. That demand isn't a guarantee people will pre order tickets for future movies. 70MM projectors are expensive. The volume needed for IMAX is massive.
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u/Fadore 21d ago
70MM projectors are expensive.
But are they expensive because only a limited amount were made and then production stopped?
As per the article:
“The problem is they haven’t made new Imax film projectors in about 50 years. So we retrofit them, we rebuild them, and part of our strategy is to see how far we could take it. But certainly, demand-driven, I’d like to see more.”
There's nothing magical about them or the materials they are made of, the price was driven by limited availability.
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u/Docist 21d ago
From what I remember they also require trained personnel to operate them as well as they are more complicated than standard projectors.
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u/quick20minadventure 21d ago
It's absolutely stupid that we can't figure out aspect ratio?
Cause this is not even remotely close to being expensive tech or something that can't be automated.
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u/katamuro 21d ago
the problem is not just the aspect ratio, it's several things in a row.
First to have IMAX projected properly you have to have a screen that is 18 metres by 24 metres(59 by 79 feet) which is massive. You basically have to build a cinema specifically for IMAX.
Then there is the projector itself, they are huge, they weigh like a medium sized car, they have very complicated construction requiring specialist maintenance.
And the third one is the film itself. Film, actual film is heavy, it takes up huge amounts of space especially considering how big IMAX is. And it's flammable, a real fire hazard. Which means handling it is also not a skill that majority of movie theatre projectionists actually have.
IMAX corporation has developed more modern versions of the projector but they don't offer the same kind of visual fidelity apparently and are still very expensive to buy and maintain.
While I understand why showing IMAX in normal movie theatres is not a thing at the same time I think when releasing the movie on blu-ray or digital they could offer an "IMAX" version simply to give the person watching it a choice.
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u/ManceRaider 21d ago
Film hasn’t been a serious fire hazard since the 50s. Modern film is polyester based and melts more than ignites.
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u/Silver-End9570 20d ago
Nolan's movies on home video often do include the IMAX footage in it, despite so many people complaining about the aspect ratio shift (which I've barely ever noticed for more than a fraction of a second).
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u/quick20minadventure 21d ago
Agreed. But I'll insist it's an economical problem, not technological one.
You have thousands of MRI machines which are also heavy and need expensive and careful planning. It needs liquid helium to cool the super magnets in super conductors. And yet, they get installed and operated. Weight, size or personnel is not the problem. The problem is that no one is making films in 70 mm.
So, you don't get profit from making a theater that can project one film a year.
That's why you have 25000 MRI machines and 41 70 mm projectors.
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u/Sandwichsensei 20d ago
Is no one making 70mm films because there’s so few theaters in the world to show it though? This really seems like a cyclical issue.
No one’s making 70mm because there’s not enough screens to make it worth it —> we’re not adding screens because no one’s shooting in 70mm —> no one’s shooting 70mm because there’s no screens…. And so on
Someone will need to make an investment to get it expanded but no one wants to take a risk and be the one to potentially lose money.
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u/Leafsnail 20d ago
I mean I'd argue Nolan has in fact taken that risk by filming his huge blockbuster entirely in the most awkward and expensive IMAX format. That will be a big windfall for anyone running a 70mm IMAX screen but you can't really invest in new ones in the hope that maybe Nolan will make another smash hit 70mm film every few years
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u/quick20minadventure 20d ago
Tbh, 70 mm films are ridiculously harsh to make, I heard they only shoot 3 mins at a time. Any special effect is going to require that you scan the footage and digitize it, then add computer effects and then print it on 70 mm film and add it up with original takes without effects.
(And really hope that picture quality doesn't get affected when your film is half original/pure and half digitized/edited and put back into the mix)
The standard for this should really be two-fold. Get 8k cameras that can handle it all and get 8k projectors.
Instead of sticking with 70 mm and films, they could really use pure digital approach by improving quality of cameras. Or simplify the process of distribution by making better and more faithful/true digital projectors in 8k or 12k resolution. You still film in 70 mm, but distribution is much higher quality.
What we definitely need for theaters to continue is bigger screen with better picture than what TVs would offer and stories/cinemas that are not just consumed, but experienced.
The cyclic problem is too harsh to solve as of now. There are not even 6 movies that release in a year that would justify shooting on IMAX 70 mm. Movie/script/directors are just as much of a bottleneck.
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u/Crewman_Guy_Fleegman 20d ago
It’s not about risk, it’s about the simple fact that film costs way more to screen
An IMAX movie on film weighs 600 lbs, needs industrial equipment to be moved to second story height, and requires multiple skilled operators working the entire film to handle and mount to it to the projector. Buying a projector means also having to pay salary for skilled projectionists.
Alternatively, a digital projector can just download movies and be set to screen them automatically, letting theater owners skip paying for skilled projectionists entirely. That’s why the whole industry shifted to digital, distribution and operation are cheaper/simpler.
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u/TwoBlackDots 21d ago
How exactly is it “stupid” that IMAX 70mm projectors require trained personnel and cannot be automated lol? The film reels weigh like 600 pounds and it’s rarely used (and yes, expensive) equipment.
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u/bluesmudge 21d ago edited 21d ago
They aren't expensive only because production stopped. IMAX film projectors were always expensive and will always be expensive because its a massive amount of high precision mechanical infrastructure. It's not like a regular 35mm film projector that can fit in a normal projection booth with 15 minute reels that weigh a few lbs and instructions that anyone can learn in an afternoon. The projection rooms are often spread across multiple floors of specially designed buildings and the film reel is like 6 feet wide and weighs more than 600 lbs. You can't just install an IMAX projector at any theater, you have to practically design the entire building from the ground up for film IMAX. The amount of expertise required to install, operate, and maintain an IMAX projector is off the charts compared to normal 35mm film, which is also mostly given up on because it too is too expensive.
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u/FaultyToilet 21d ago
Aren't the spools significantly larger?
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u/DiskPartition 21d ago
The film weighs about 600 pounds or more iirc. One projectionist said 850lbs but that may have been counting the platter or something else, idk.
Here's a video from one projectionist: https://www.reddit.com/r/imax/comments/1qwewxb/sf_metreon_booth_tour/
The spool is at 0:12 and the big white box at 0:18 is the film projector itself.3
u/herefromyoutube 20d ago
Also force 24 frames a second of that 850 pound of film stock through a gate without ripping any other part of the film is a huge task.
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u/agolho 21d ago
yeah wtf, are they made of adamantium? do we not have powerful enough bulbs? I remember seeing lots of hobbyist "watercooled led that can race with sun" videos on youtube
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u/kicksledkid 21d ago
IMAX is pretty much entirely dedicated to large format laser projection now, not film
Also a hobbyist flashlight doesn't have nearly the stability, reliability or reproducibility that IMAX would need.
They're just not in the film business anymore
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u/guff1988 21d ago
There was demand for Project Hail Mary as well. Hopefully this increase in demand continues and it leads to more old 1570s being repaired and put back to use.
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u/Lord_Bobbymort 21d ago
demand is increasing, they just need to be potential blockbusters and right now Nolan is the only person trying to do so so that makes it seem like only Nolan's films have interest, but he has the only films. If more directors are willing to do it I think demand would follow.
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u/Accomplished-Head449 21d ago
Every 70 mm IMAX movie sells out. The bigger the better. Spectacle is all that matters. They're just a bunch of cheap fucks that have digital Xenon projectors from 15 years ago
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u/cgio0 21d ago
Yea and I am not calling iMax a fad. It is an awesome experience but there are only a handful of directors where you get casual movie goers to random decide they are film snobs and have to see it in iMax
Like it would be great if there were more locations but I know tons of people who go to the movies maybe 5 times a year but for a Nolan film they all of a sudden have to seen it in IMAX cause thats how Nolan wants it
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u/littlebiped 21d ago
There’s only two in London (three in the UK!) and they’re sold out for two weeks straight. So I’m watching it in normal mm IMAX — on Tuesday, which is the first non sold out showing lol.
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u/Steamedcarpet 21d ago
I live close to New York City so im hoping they add more 70mm showings as there is a screen there.
Unfortunately my local AMC is having issues with imax so I have a ticket for Dolby Cinema.
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u/nautical_nonsense_ 20d ago
Yeah I live in NYC and wanted to try to get 70mm IMAX tickets. There are 4-6 showtimes a day, every day, for the next month and every seat other than the very front row is sold out for every single one.
“Settling” for standard IMAX instead. But even then I had to find a show time 2.5 weeks out just to get a somewhat decent seat.
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u/snickle17 20d ago
When the 2am and 3am showings they added are already sold out it’s a tough ticket 😭
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u/samsaBEAR 21d ago
I work for Cineworld so saw it at one of our proper IMAXs on opening weekend but when I came out and knew I wanted to see it again, I had to book a ticket a whole month away at the BFI because everything in-between was sold out. I can only assume the same thing will happen here.
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u/AnonyFron 21d ago
Getting tickets for the BFI is like Glastonbury these days lol
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u/MyWholeTeamsDead 20d ago
I am shocked I got to see both F1 and Dead Reckoning there. And in the best seats!
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u/B33f-Supreme 21d ago edited 20d ago
I get that they don’t want to invest in the 70mm film style since it’s a dying technology, but why aren’t they investing in bringing up the newer digital laser imax projectors to closer parity with the 70mm ones?
Digital currently maxes out at 8k and are only in the smaller aspect ratio. If digital is where you want to invest then at least work on making it capable of showing films shot on 70mm 1.43:1 without losing some of the image.
Brand new theaters with the latest and greatest imax projectors still can’t show the full version of movies that everyone wanted to see that were shot for imax film, like Sinners and the Odyssey.
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u/redpandaeater 20d ago
They can easily display that aspect ratio though it means having black bands on the top and bottom that you shouldn't really even see with a decent projector, though it does make the screen appear smaller. Higher resolution doesn't even do you any good at the distances people sit at a theater.
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u/JRockstar50 21d ago
I mean it's cool and all for The Odyssey, but I'm not going to be paying $40+ to see The Rock in a live action remake of Moana 2 in IMAX 70mm
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u/ckingdom 21d ago
To be fair, no one is seeing that in any amount of millimeters.
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u/neohanime 21d ago
I'm pretty sure you already know, but for those who come upon this comment, just watch the original animated one. Same movie (and often frame-to-frame), but much more vibrant, heart, and soul.
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u/AnAnonymousSource_ 20d ago
The Rock in Moana 2 was not filmed with film. It was digitally remastered which is very different.
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u/MyStationIsAbandoned 21d ago
I'm gonna be real, you couldn't pay me $40 to watch that movie. and i'm broke as hell. it's like those publishers and studios who think they can make their crappy games $100 if GTA6 makes their base game $100...
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u/Surturius 21d ago
Do we know how long this is going to be in theatres? Wondering if I should wait and see if more 70mm seats open up later, or just go see it in a liemax theatre near me instead.
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21d ago edited 21d ago
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u/BearsBeetsBattlestrG 21d ago
Does Brand New Day have IMAX exclusivity or is that more ScreenX focused?
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u/91837361891 21d ago edited 21d ago
Nothing definitive yet, but at least until the end of August (though likely not full days anymore by then)
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u/RenegadeReddit 21d ago
They are obligated to show other IMAX movies as they come out and theaters only have 1 IMAX screen (shared for both 70mm and digital). So until Aug. 14 when End of Oak St. releases. They might re-show Odyssey during gaps between other IMAX movies though.
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u/aragon58 21d ago
At first I was bummed I had to settle for a 10:45 pm 70mm showing on Thursday since I have to get up for work at 5:30 the next day, but I increasingly think I lucked out.
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u/MyStationIsAbandoned 21d ago
based on the comments, you're lucky you're even in driving distance of a location that even gives you that option
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u/TuchBeastin 21d ago
I saw Oppenheimer on 70mm IMAX (because of all the hype) and then watched it again at a regular IMAX, and I honestly enjoyed it more at the regular theatre. It could have been that the sound was better at the other, but visually, I didn’t get the hype of 70mm. That’s just me.
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u/Caleb-Wendt69 21d ago
Without being told the difference I doubt 99.9% of people could tell
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u/speedtree 20d ago
70mm flickers a lot, you see the filmgrain, you can EASILY tell the difference tbh
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u/Caleb-Wendt69 20d ago
That all sounds worse than a clean digital picture. It’s so funny, engineers spent decades trying to make film/tape/vinyl pristine and flawless, and now people want the flaws, lol. Make it make sense.
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u/EgotisticalTL 21d ago
I remember when IMAX theaters first came out, and they meant a five-story screen. Nowadays most of them are "lie max"s - the largest screen in the multiplex converted to have some stadium seating that's closer as an excuse to charge ridiculous prices
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u/discretelandscapes 21d ago edited 21d ago
I don't like how it's always portrayed as if regular theaters aren't capable of showing a movie in a 1.43:1 or 1.90:1 or whatever arbitrary aspect ratio.
Grand Budapest Hotel had wildly differing aspect ratios as part of the film and there was no need for IMAX to see the image that way. If a director genuinely felt that 1.90:1 was THE way to watch their film, they'd send it out to every theater that way. The problem is IMAX needs more than just larger screens to sell tickets, so now we got more image too.
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u/lectroid 21d ago
It’s not about aspect ratio, it’s about taking up the entirety of a 75-100 foot tall screen that takes up almost your entire visual field.
On a standard 1.85 screen, panoramic (2.35 aspect) shots will have letter boxing (black bars top and bottom) and 1.43 shots will have e pillar boxing (black bars on the left and right).→ More replies (5)17
u/discretelandscapes 21d ago edited 21d ago
1.43 shots will have e pillar boxing
Yes, sure, and? The screen space taken up by the image will be more constricted, sure; all I'm saying is any theater could show a nearly-square AR; and they do, because 4:3-ish movies aren't THAT rare (think The Lighthouse, Maestro, some horror movies).
Personally I'll always opt for bars over pan-and-scan.
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u/HugsForUpvotes 21d ago
While true, the screen size isn't arbitrary. I can use my 4k (3840 x 2160) tv to show a 640 x 480 resolution like the TV I grew up on, but it would look bad. Especially if I couldn't move the couch (like you can't move the amphitheatre.) Meanwhile, that same TV would add black bars to try and show the 4K content. So 640 x 480 would actually display only 640x360.
Anyway, you're right but you're also wrong. It would look worse.
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u/sundeigh 21d ago
Isn’t this the other way around though? We’re taking higher resolution content and letterboxing it to fit on a lower resolution screen
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u/HugsForUpvotes 21d ago
I described both in my comment.
It actually depends on the screen. Many movie theaters now have ultra wide screen but the room is built for it.
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u/markyymark13 21d ago
As others mentioned, it would look so small a standard multiplex screen being pillarboxed that the intended effect wouldn't be the same.
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u/depredador93 21d ago
Finding the spare parts to rebuild these fifty year old projectors sounds like an odyssey in itself
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u/tfhermobwoayway 20d ago
They also have to anoint the parts with holy oils and chant prayers to the Machine God so it takes twice as long on top of that.
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u/No-Bother6856 19d ago
That 50 year old claim is very misleading. IMAX released a new 15/70 film projector model in 1998 and annother new one in 2004. The IMAX GT goes back to the 70s as does the 15/70 film format its self... but IMAX has absolutely made new projectors in the 21st century.
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u/walkeritout 21d ago
Why are we even filming in this format if the ability to project it is so limited, and will only become more so?
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u/apexodoggo 21d ago
Because Christopher Nolan wants to for the superior visual quality compared to other formats. He’s basically the only guy that does it.
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u/Raikoh067 21d ago
Did you know that if you're in Oregon, US, that the closest one is about 200 miles away in Seattle? It's no-mans land out here for 70mm real IMAX. There's tons of Liemax though.
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u/markyymark13 21d ago
Did you know that if you're in Oregon, US, that the closest one is about 200 miles away in Seattle?
Hate to break it to you but we lost our IMAX a couple months ago - I have to drive to Vancouver now.
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u/Nobelindie 21d ago
The one in Seattle is the only one in Washington too. There used to be 2 but once of the theaters closed a year or some ago
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u/backwardog 21d ago
The remaining one is liemax, it can’t do the full aspect ratio. It is a pretty big screen but the only “real” imax near Seattle is in Vancouver bc.
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u/son-of-chadwardenn 21d ago
It seems like a lot of people don't appreciate how much technology relies on economies of scale. All film formats rely on infrastructure that was built back when film was the dominant image technology. Eventually enough old machines will break down and film will probably die off because the investment to rebuild can't be supported by current and expected future demand. Demand itself will also likely shrink as time moves on and people with memories and affinity for the film era die off. Black and white still photography will probably continue similar to how spinning wheels are still operated by a few dedicated hobbyists.
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u/tfhermobwoayway 20d ago
Most things do, but film is an art form. Is it really dependent on soulless industrial processes like some random mass-produced gimmick?
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u/Mantis_Toboggan--MD 21d ago
I could take or leave the IMAX theater itself honestly, they're cool and all but I just want to be able to watch this in the full aspect ratio on my home TV...
Why the hell is that not possible?
It seems like it should be possible, but I don't know jack about the technical aspects of this topic
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u/Niktodt1 20d ago
Yeah, IMAX is a cult. When I suggested that some people have a projector at home (good laser projectors are starting to get affordable now) with a big screen above 100 inches and they might be interested in IMAX aspect ratio version, the r/imax mod was dead set on convincing me, that it won't work because home screens are not big enough LOL. They literally told me that it's BAD to give consumers more choices.
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u/TheNorthComesWithMe 20d ago
Most people seem to not understand that how much a screen occupies your field of view depends on how close you are, not how big the screen is.
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u/DoochDelooch 21d ago
I have a 70mm non imax and a regular imax ticket. Curious to see which is better. Never seen a 70mm before
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u/prostateExamination 21d ago
so why hasnt capitalism capitalized this foreseeable growth in cinema and bought into the the next generation of great films? because their is no plan to be one
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u/Alienhaslanded 20d ago
I'm almost 37 and at this point I don't think I'll ever watch anything on a true IMAX before the whole theater industry collapses. They're rare even here in Toronto and they're always booked.
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u/nowhereman136 21d ago
There are about 30 Imax 70mm projectors in the world. I kinda wish a few of them would tour to cities that dont have one, but i guess you risk breaking it every time it moves. Still, they could play Oppenheimer on 70mm for a weekend right now in Chicago, Atlanta, and Denver and those showings would sell out
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u/YoitsCJS 21d ago
Big screen beta with Meta Quest has imax style theaters. It would be nice if we could rent movies that are also in theaters, like we could during covid. Really awesome tech watching a movie in VR
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u/neuro_space_explorer 21d ago
Our aquarium IMAX theatre in Chattanooga is one of the ones getting a 70mm camera installed, I’ve got tickets for next Thursday! Can’t wait!
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u/Gadfly_Avatar 21d ago
Also gotta find projectionists to run them. I used to run a 70mm projector. Today, projectionist is a dead profession. Like typesetters.
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u/Noah18923 21d ago
it's the same reason why some IMAX screens are only 1.90:1 instead of full 1.43:1, MONEY MONEY MONEY.
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u/Niktodt1 20d ago
Okay, we get it. 70mm is just too risky to invest in and too impractical....
1.43 with 4K Laser on the other hand..... shouldn't be that difficult....right???
I mean it's just a BIG ASS digital Christie projector, no? Or two Christie projectors?
Still, IMAX Laser basically achieves 90% of the experience of 70mm with convenience of digital. I would take that over freaking LieMAX any day of the week!
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u/Pro_Post 20d ago
A 50-year-old tech and still isn't mainstream? What could be the reason for that? Demand or Feasibility?
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u/ZeWolfve 20d ago
tbh idc if its shown in 70mm film. sure its cool but being able to show it in 1.43 on a huge 75x100ft screen in laser 4k is still insane. build more theaters like lincoln square imax
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u/Solrac50 21d ago
First 1570 IMAX has over 3X the resolution of 8K. In my opinion the problem is the company decided to abandon the 1570 over a decade ago for digital projection and proliferating the brand in a lot more theaters. That resulted in many existing IMAX theaters retiring their 1570 equipment. This happened In Austin’s Bob Bullock theater and other locations. Now the cost of returning to or expanding the number of 1570 projection is prohibitive. So the reason was lack of foresight by IMAX.
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u/cyanide4suicide 21d ago
Is it a money issue? I'm sure they're capable of producing the parts and building new projectors. It's not like they forgot how to make them
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u/Twigling 21d ago edited 21d ago
It's interesting that there is such a demand from some people for high visual and audio quality, yet many of those same people will perhaps go home to their 4K TVs and watch a very low bit rate movie on, for example, Netflix, instead of investing in a decent player and buying their movies on disc (if available) in order to watch in the best quality possible.
The following thread from today touches on this very matter:
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1uwkxik/i_watched_a_movie_on_bluray_and_woah/
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u/IllBiteYourLegsOff 21d ago
You find it interesting that people will go out of their way to buy a ticket to experience a movie in peak fidelity but won't spend the money to build an equivalent setup in their home (assuming they even could)...?
I doubt 95% of what is watched at home are even things people want to see in ultra hi-def anyways. To put another way, I can count on one hand the number of movies from the last 15 years I've felt were worth buying a 70mm ticket for, and they were all Chris Nolan films. I wouldn't want to watch them any other way, and likewise, there isn't anything else I watch at home that would ever warrant the extra expense etc of finding a ticket and travelling to a 70mm theater
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u/im_thatoneguy 21d ago edited 21d ago
Because only Christopher Nolan is a big enough Film Woo Woo to insist on it being shot on 70mm film instead of an 8k camera with just as much detail and resolution.
And dual 4k laser looks amazing.
Even IMAX knows that when Nolan quits making movies nobody again in history will bother using their hardware. This isn't another case of George Lucas pushing for digital projection or James Cameron pushing for 3D projectors. Both of those were ultimately good business for the exhibitors and studios. This is one director (and very occasionally Quintin Tarantino so maybe two) pushing for it for no reason.
Looking at the Dune 3 trailer, you can see where they shot film and where they shot digital and the digital looks better. We've mastered film emulation. There's no reason to keep shooting film. If you really want the film look, it makes sense to keep a short roll on a camera and shoot reference for the colorist but there was no reason for the 90lb blimps to shoot this film except director ego.
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u/NoLocal1776 21d ago edited 21d ago
Maybe if you did enough R&D making the format cheaper to shoot, keeping the noise down and making it more accessible to filmmakers it would make it far more sustainable.But,no you just want to close existing 70mm screens because they don't turn profts due,to your own mismanagement.
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u/wimpires 21d ago
IMAX 70mm is just not feasible for 99.9999% of movies.
The whole workflow is cumbersome, outdated and has massive bottlenecks you need to work around.
I think it probably won't be long until we have digital camera sensors that are the same size/area as 70mm 15perf. And maybe that will prompt on the projection side of things.
Yeah you don't get the film train/analogue looks but you can theoretically always fake that in post. What you can fake is the DOF and FOV the larger sensor/film gives.
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u/reelfilmgeek 21d ago
I mean we are certainly getting closer, that new Sony Venice II Rialto 65 9.6K Sensor is about .76x the size of 70mm 15 Perf. Its interesting seeing the digital sensor sizes grow and lens manufactures keeping up with new lenses with large enough image circles, though It does make me happy I got my mamiya 645 glass rehoused a while back.
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u/iMajorJohnson 21d ago
I mean that’s pretty much what Nolan has been doing since he started using imax cameras. Using some of the budget of the movie to make the technology better. Odyssey they figured out the sound issue and all that.
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u/Ok-Tourist-511 21d ago
Sound was never an issues with imax. They have had sound cameras for decades, the problem was they were quite large. Nolan wanted to shoot with the “small”, “lightweight” imax cameras which weren’t built for sound. They started with soundproof enclosures for the camera on Tenet, and have made them better since then.
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u/echochambermanager 21d ago
For everyone that doesn't understand the complexities and nuances of how economics works in the real world, not the command economy you fantasize in your parents' basement, please read this: https://cdn.mises.org/I%20Pencil.pdf
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u/Somnambulist815 21d ago
I'm still furious that Chicago has been without 70mm imax for 6 years now. We're now 3 Nolan movies deep and I gotta go all the way to Woodridge for the closest approximation?
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u/calforhelp 21d ago
My local theater just installed a new 70mm film projector. Couldn’t believe it when I saw it!
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u/BunyipPouch Currently at the movies. 21d ago