Denver and Colorado Springs house two of the world’s 42 IMAX 70mm projectors, the equipment needed to see “The Odyssey” the way its director intended. That number has already started to drop, as a technical issue at Regal UA Colorado Center last Saturday caused the theater to cancel all IMAX 70mm showings.
Similarly, moviegoers attending one of Texas’ two IMAX 70mm theaters were forced to leave without completing the film. During a showing at San Antonio’s Rivercenter Mall, guests said that the film stopped three separate times before the showing was canceled altogether. Guests were given refunds and vouchers while the projector is repaired, but there’s no estimate on how long that could take.
These problems are exacerbated by the fact that new IMAX film projectors haven’t been made in a very, very long time. The theater industry has been on the ropes for the last several years after being delivered a one-two punch of a global pandemic and the rise of on-demand streaming, but IMAX and other premium cinema technologies have proven to carve out a niche for themselves. Certainly, the demand for niche formats such as IMAX 70mm is there, but the supply is lacking.
“We’re sold out in some theaters into the fifth week already,” IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond told Variety at The Odyssey premiere. “There’s certainly more demand. The problem is they haven’t made new IMAX film projectors in about 50 years. So we retrofit them, rebuild them and part of our strategy is to see how far we can take it. But certainly, demand-driven, I’d like to see more.”
