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Monday
08Sep2008

IMAX Adds 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'

DateMonday, September 8, 2008 at 11:09AM
With The Dark Knight currently riding high in 139 IMAX locations, the impulse might be to keep it around a little while longer. However, the large screen theater chain has Eagle Eye set to go on September 26th, followed in November by Madagascar 2: Again with the Talking Zoo Animals or whatever it's called.

The company was really hoping for a fourth-quarter windfall with Harry Potter, but since they'll probably make more money showing that film next summer, it's not a total loss. However, that did leave a huge hole in their repertory schedule of Hollywood films, and now they've got a replacement.

IMAX has announced that The Day the Earth Stood Still will be unveiled in their DMR technology on December 12th. Said Bruce Snyder of Fox, ""We're very excited to once again expand our relationship with IMAX to offer moviegoers a chance to experience another one of our tent-pole movies in a truly unique and premium way."

IMAX is equally excited, because in a press release announcing the film's addition to the company's slate, IMAX co-CEO's Richard Gelfond and Bradley Wechsler revealed another tiny note of interest. "With the ongoing rollout of IMAX digital theatres, we expect that on December 12th the size of our network will be considerably larger than it is today, which is good for IMAX, exhibitors in the IMAX business, our partners at Fox and, of course, moviegoers."

So I guess we'll have more IMAX theaters by then, which means a slightly higher average ticket price for The Day the Earth Stood Still. It also means that all of those protests from people unhappy that they've remade a sci-fi classic will look and sound better than ever!

Looking past this one film, I think the news of more theaters bodes very well for Watchmen next spring, which is a natural fit for this technology, although we haven't heard an announcement on whether or not it will be shown in IMAX (how could it not?). However, when the studios start adding up the numbers and they realize that IMAX is a great asset to their major films, we're going to see some pushing and shoving for next May's movies - Wolverine, Star Trek, and Terminator. How is IMAX going to handle that? They can't run all three simultaneously. They've got Potter in July and Transformers 2 at the end of June, as well.

Maybe IMAX will use its increased number of screens to its advantage, splitting the theaters among the three May movies and Potter and Transformers. You don't really want to give each of those movies two week engagements; I think you'd actually make less money that way. Of course, they could skip Wolverine in favor of Star Trek or Star Trek in favor of Wolverine, but I think they absolutely have to have Watchmen and Terminator, the company had incredible success with Transformers last year, and they've already got a contract for Harry Potter.

This is most likely a good problem to have if you're IMAX: "Whose money do we want the most?"

AuthorColin Boyd | | in , , , , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | CommentPost a Comment |

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