The Next Big Thing

There was a time when we went to Imax theaters for whales and rockets.

That was when the big big screen was for shorter educational films about the deep sea, outer space and wild kingdoms -- movies shot on big Imax film with big Imax cameras.

Now we go to Imax for eccentric candymen and superheroes with bat complexes. And we're going more often.

"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" was No. 1 at the box office last weekend with a $56.1 million take, $2.2 million of which was made on 65 Imax screens. It was Imax's biggest opening weekend ever, besting the debuts of "Batman Begins" and last winter's "The Polar Express," which eventually grossed a record-breaking $45 million on 83 Imax screens.

When "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" opens in November, it will be the year's fourth Hollywood feature to open simultaneously in Imax and regular 35mm theaters. There were three such releases last year ("Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," "Spider-Man 2" and "The Polar Express") and two the year before that (the final legs of "The Matrix" trilogy). Next year there will be six, maybe more.

Imax's corporate strategy is to entice Americans happiest in front of a 60-inch plasma-screen TV, wrapped in the fuzzy warmth of a Netflix plan.

"Consumers are saying, 'In order to get me out of the home, you need to wow me, you need to give me something special,' " says Rich Gelfond, co-chairman and co-CEO of Imax, which is jointly headquartered in Toronto and New York.

"[Imax] helps 'eventize' our big movies," says Dan Fellman, president of domestic distribution for Warner Bros. Pictures, the studio behind half of the feature film releases on Imax. "And we will continue to release our big films that way." Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Columbia and Disney have also released features in Imax.

"What's great about Imax is that in this sea of uncertainty, or seeming malaise at the box office, they're filling theaters," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations Co., the box office tracking firm.

The regular box office is still down 7.5 percent, but Imax is up 37 percent, according to Greg Foster, Imax's co-chairman and president of filmed entertainment. "Charlie" made double on its Imax screens what it did on regular screens.

But not everyone is sold on Imax. "Our experience at Fox is still under review," says Julian Levin, vice president of digital exhibition and non-theatrical sales and distribution at Fox, which released "Robots" this year on Imax. "Other than the sort of unique bump with 'Polar Express,' the performance of the other pictures really haven't shown to be that incredibly remarkable."

The folks at Imax compare their brand to Starbucks for coffee or Tiffany for jewelry, in that people will pay a premium price for an amplified, high-quality experience -- in this case, gargantuan crystal-clear images and booming 12,000-watt sound you can't get in a home theater.