As Many Theaters Struggle, Imax Leads a New Boom

Premium large-format screens have become all the rage among moviegoers despite a steep upcharge. Here’s how it happened

Aside from her husband, Christopher Nolan, their children and her mother-in-law, Oscar-winning producer Emma Thomas gave a shoutout to only one other person by name when accepting the Academy Award for best picture for Oppenheimer. “And I want to thank Rich Gelfond at Imax and everyone else at Imax for believing in this movie when it maybe didn’t make much sense to do so,” said Thomas.

For Gelfond, who was in the audience, that moment won’t be forgotten anytime soon and comes as his company witnesses its own atomic explosion, with more moviegoers than ever embracing the Imax and premium large-format (PLF) experience despite an average hefty upcharge of $5 per ticket (in L.A., an Imax seat can run $28). Imax collected a record $1.06 billion in global ticket sales in 2023, led by Nolan’s Oppenheimer.

As many standard auditoriums remain sparsely populated, Imax, along with a robust offering of other PLF screens that have popped up in the past decade in hopes of emulating Gelfond’s model, is enjoying a post-pandemic boom. But Imax remains the leader and is on a mega winning streak as it expands beyond blockbusters to work with smaller indies. It has collaborated several times with Neon on such docs as the David Bowie film Moonage Daydream, and is doing a new monthly screening program with A24 along with giving a full run to Alex Garland’s Civil War. “It’s a long time coming and is all in service of feeding what is a very powerful audience and a younger audience,” says Neon chief Tom Quinn.

Last year, Imax — which is seeing an increasing demand for its proprietary cameras — saw its record-breaking ticket sales come from 1,700 screens, including 417 domestically, even as overall box office revenue lagged. “When you look at the numbers, Imax gives the whole multiplex a lift, not only because of the people we bring in, but because of the sellouts and people who spill over into other theaters,” says Gelfond.