

Those figures defy conventional wisdom that price deters people from going to the movies. In contrast, it brought in an average of $25,159 per location on PLF screens and $34,214 per location on Imax screens. To pluck a recent example of Imax’s box office heft, take Sony’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.” The animated comic book adventure opened to a mighty $120 million from 4,313 North American locations, and averaged $19,736 per location on standard 2D screens. As a result, studios have more at stake in the battle for access to the finite number of screens that can generate outsized ticket sales. On a big-budget tentpole, those enhanced viewing experiences can account for as much as 30-40% of overall box office returns even though there are only about 900 PLF screens in the country. Moviegoing is down 33% from 2019, but the market share for Imax, one of the art’s more recognizable forms, is up 50% without adding any new screens, according to the company. Lest that sound like spin from PLF operators, there are stats to back up the idea that audiences are buying what they’re selling.

Here’s why: Attendance hasn’t rebounded in pandemic times, but the demand to watch certain movies on the biggest and brightest screens, known in the industry as premium large formats (PLF), has grown exponentially. There may be more of these fights brewing in the future. I would hope after ‘Oppenheimer’s’ run, we can bring back ‘Mission.'” It’s not a matter of us saying which we can make more money on. “Nolan has a special place in Imax’s heart because he uses our cameras and promotes us. I know ‘Mission: Impossible’ is going to be a really big movie,” Imax CEO Rich Gelfond tells Variety. “I feel sad in a way we can’t accommodate all of them. (Directors like Nolan, who use Imax cameras to film their movies, are typically granted a two-week exclusive window.) Greta Gerwig’s star-studded “Barbie,” which also opens on July 21, isn’t playing in Imax at all as a result.
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By shorting the Imax run of “Dead Reckoning,” he suggests, all involved parties risk losing out on serious coinage.īut long before the oft-delayed “MI” sequel moved to mid-July, Universal had already ironed out a rare agreement for “Oppenehimer” to control Imax’s entire North American footprint for three full weeks. Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible 7” is only playing on Imax screens for one week, as first reported by Puck, a newsletter that covers the media business, before it has to relinquish all of its showtimes to “Oppenheimer.” That’s despite Cruise making a few calls around town to remind everyone that not even a year ago, “Maverick” earned more than $100 million from Imax alone. Except, in this case, there wasn’t much to negotiate.
