IMAX: big screen, big revenues

The IMAX theatre in the Bourbon Shopping
Picture: Aline Arruda / Divulgação.
Source: ilustradanocinema.folha.blog.uol.com.br




After waiting almost 5 years since the announcement, Brazil has finally a movie theatre with IMAX screen in São Paulo, which is open since January of this year. The next city to get this Canadian technology is Curitiba, which was supposed to be the first one... disregarding an old plan of having IMAX in that marketing illusion called Terra Encantada, an entertainment park in Rio. (Please don’t talk about this with some ESPM marketing professors from Rio. They don’t have good memories of investing in popcorn for that park). Anyway...

IMAX has been traditionally used for educational and scientific movies. But management people from Bourbon, the shopping center in São Paulo that got the giant screen, believe that the increasing number of blockbusters that can be screened in IMAX will help to pay them back. They invested about US$ 2.7 million in this theatre. Based on this, they are re-screening the last Batman movie, The Dark Knight. To support the idea, we can take a look at the release of the film Watchmen in the beginning of this month (text from Big Movie Zone blog):


“The IMAX release contributed $5.4 million of the $55 million that the film grossed at the domestic box office, on a total of 124 North American IMAX screens this weekend. The picture posted a domestic IMAX per screen average of $43,863. Internationally, the picture generated an estimated $727,000 from 29 IMAX screens. The film’s worldwide IMAX opening total was $6.2 million.

‘We’re very happy with the overall performance of the film, and the strong IMAX results show that the IMAX brand is clearly resonating with Watchmen fans,’ said Dan Fellman, President of Domestic Distribution at Warner Bros. Pictures.”

I wish a big success for IMAX in Brazil; it is really an amazing experience. I hope the initial plans to have it in at least another 4 Brazilian cities will be confirmed... and that my beloved Belo Horizonte will get one.


An IMAX camera at the Montreal Science Center

Source: Wikipedia Commons