70mm Imax has been around in different forms for many years originally with short films mostly nature or animal documentaries with the Pepsi IMAX being London’s first opening in 1999 but with limited content available it sadly closed less than 3 years later.
It was then a very big risk for the BFI to invest £12m to build the IMAX cinema on the South Bank with still very limited content available and when it first opened its programming was short nature and animal documentaries and shorts like CyberWorld being my first in 2000 of many trips to seeing films at the IMAX.
In 2002 the studios started to release IMAX conversions of their films including The Matrix and Apollo 13 but it was Robert Zemeckis’s 2004 3D IMAX The Polar Express was the game changer taking $75m of its $302m from only 100 IMAX cinemas.
Warner Bros converted scenes from several Harry Potter films which drew audiences in but Hollywood woke up to IMAX after Christopher Nolan’s 2008 The Dark Knight took almost $50m from IMAX cinemas. In 2011 Paramount released Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol in IMAX after director Brad Bird films several scenes in the format and included exclusively a 6 minute prologue of The Dark Knight Rises was only screened in 70mm IMAX cinemas.
IMAX wanted to expand the IMAX brand but the problem is that the IMAX format is different to the way conventionally cinemas are built and the cost to build separate IMAX cinemas is very expensive. So in 2008 IMAX created IMAX Digital instead of one 70mm projector it was 2x 2k digital projectors projected over each other. The sound system is more intense than regular cinema and the screen size was bigger than a conventional cinema but smaller than 70mm IMAX cinemas.
Many complained that it is not real IMAX and some have described it as fake IMAX that was cheapening the brand. But I do think now that even though Digital IMAX might not give people the true IMAX experience it is a far more intense experience than regular conventional cinema offers.
Audiences do need to be told that they aren’t getting the same IMAX experience in a regular cinema multiplex to what they could experience at a 70mm IMAX cinema? This is something exhibitors need to do as they are charging the same price for digital and 70mm IMAX but audiences are finding out that they aren’t getting the same experience. Cinema chains have created their own rival digital IMAX versions like Vue Cinemas VueXtreme and Odeon ISENSE but IMAX were the pioneers in this format and with 70mm IMAX can offer something than these rivals cannot give audiences.
In recent years studios have realised through director like Christopher Nolan that IMAX is a film format that can give cinema audiences something different regular cinemas can offer and through the success of films like The Dark Knight Rises in 2012 taking £1m in 5 weeks at the BFI IMAX that hasn’t happened in a London cinema for about 20 years.
In less than 2 weeks time Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros will be releasing Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar in 70mm IMAX along with other formats. Christopher Nolan filmed several scenes of the film in 70mm IMAX and being passionate about film and the IMAX format wants as many people to see it in film be it 70mm IMAX, 70mm or 35mm. There is an embargo on reviews until Monday but it’s getting incredible Tweets raving about the films with most saying it needs to be seen in 70mm IMAX.
While regular cinema attendance has dropped this year in both the US and the UK the one area of growth other than Event Cinema has been IMAX as people want to experience films the way they were meant to be seen on the biggest screen possible with the best sound.
