This episode of The Town is presented by HBO Max. HBO Max presents Hacks. Nominated for 25 Emmy awards, including outstanding comedy series. In the aftermath of mistaken news reports that Deborah passed away, she and Ava returned to Las Vegas determined to secure Deborah's legacy as a comedian. Don't miss the series Variety is calling one of TV's best comedies ever. Hacks is now streaming on HBO Max.
It is Wednesday, August 12th. The box office has been on fire lately, thanks mostly to Spider-Man and the Odyssey. But if we're going to put a dumb name on this season, I'd argue it's hot IMAX summer. Craig will probably tell me that's cringey. But if you look at the numbers, IMAX is really overperforming. This past weekend, the global box office hit $52 million in the format. The fourth consecutive weekend over 50 million. First time that's ever happened. And The Odyssey, the first movie shot entirely in IMAX. It's about to become the highest grossing movie ever in the format. The stock price is up about 40% in the past 6 months. And the company is for sale, or at least it's entertaining options.
Still a lot of issues with IMAX as well. Namely, there aren't enough theaters to deal with demand when big movies come out. And there certainly aren't enough 70mm IMAX film theaters in operation. Only about 41 worldwide. So, it becomes a frenzy when something like the Odyssey premieres. And Disney was so fed up with the IMAX shortage and being unable to secure IMAX screens for Avengers Doomsday that they made up Infinity Vision, their own name for the other premium large format screens.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day generated a $360 million opening weekend without any IMAX screens. Not a good fact if you're out there trying to sell the company to Disney or another potential buyer. A lot going on with IMAX, so it seemed like a good time to have Rich Gelfond back on the show. He's the longtime CEO of the company and a very savvy observer of the box office. Today, it's the hot IMAX summer and why the heck can't they make more 70mm projectors. From The Ringer and Puck. I'm Matt Belloni and this is The Town.
All right, we are here with Rich Gelfond, CEO of IMAX, returning champion to the show. Rich, I have some bad news to start off with. This podcast is now being presented in Infinity Vision.
So I think it's a perfect match, Matt. So congratulations.
Oh, it is. You're talking about the low-quality video that I am providing on this show. YouTube quality.
I'm not going there, Matt. You said it.
All right. Well, but it does bring up this issue that I've been joking about. You've been joking about, but it is a real business issue. Disney has essentially decided that they don't like that you did an exclusive with Dune for the IMAX screens and they would very much like people to see Avengers Doomsday in premium formats. So, they just made up their own title for it. Is that — do you see that as a little bit of a threat to you?
I don't, Matt. I think it's not that they didn't like it, which they obviously didn't. I think it's that they couldn't have it. And you know the Disney organization pretty well. They like to have a lot of things. It's why they've done such a great job. And just going through the history for a second. Avengers Doomsday was supposed to come out over the summer. It didn't for whatever reason.
Oh, we knew. It's two words. The Russos.
Okay, I'm not going there either. Then we had Dune 3. I think it's going to be an amazing movie. Denis is filming it in part with IMAX film cameras. You know, Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet. I mean, it's a big deal movie. And then—
Oh, yeah. The footage at CinemaCon looked amazing.
Spectacular. And then they dated right on top of it. And they said, by the way, they were very gracious. They said, you know, they understood that we — you know, they dated second and they couldn't do it. But looking in their own mirrors, they said, 'It probably would be great if we could have IMAX, but we can't. So, what's the closest thing we could do?' And they came up with this idea. And the idea was to take pre-existing large format, whatever that is. So, everything with an X, and then put a secure process of certification, which is in a black box. I don't know what it means, but—
Oh, it's whatever PLFs they can get that are of the higher quality PLFs.
And then they'll call it, you know, Infinity Vision. So, we're playing Avengers Doomsday in China. I hope it's a great movie. I hope it does really well. But no, I'm not losing sleep over it. And by the way, the last four weekends we did over $50 million a weekend and we've never done more than one in a year. And that's in a world where Infinity Vision and Dolby and a lot of other things exist. So, no, I'm not losing sleep over it.
Yeah. No, I didn't mean it that way. I mean it more as a marketing story because the success of IMAX in recent years has been yes the technology and you do provide a premium experience but IMAX has become a key marketing tool for the studios. Disney's doing it right now. If you look at the billboards for the Ridley Scott movie, Dog Stars has IMAX all over it. And Disney's been very aggressive in promoting IMAX. And that's great for you because it increases the brand equity and the differentiation in the market. But now they've decided to throw their weight behind this other name. And I wonder if that works if that will become their primary way of promoting the event status of their movies.
So I don't think so, Matt, because you know, we've talked to Disney a lot. So next year with Disney, we have a lot of movies, including Star Wars with Ryan Gosling, one of their premier films. And by the way, at the end of next year, we're doing Avengers.
Oh, you are? Oh, that's fun.
We are. So, and we're re-releasing Avengers Endgame this year, which they are doing in Infinity Vision. So, I think they've determined it's in their best interest to market it as a separate event and lean into IMAX for their big tentpole movies. And I think we view it as, you know, fine if they like to do it, great. And they're leaning into us as well. So, we're fine with it.
Okay. So, no hard feelings. You mentioned it, but you are on a roll this summer for record weekends and the box office in general is going nuts right now. It's got to be a good time for you to sell the company. I mean, we saw a few months ago that you've engaged some bankers and having talks. Don't necessarily need to sell, of course, but where are you right now in the sale process for the company? Who's going to buy you?
Well, as you know, Matt, we don't comment on rumors floating around.
No, we can't. My lawyer is sitting next door and he'll barge through the door and yell at me. But we said at our investor day last year that we're running the company to maximize value in several ways. One, we're generating more earnings, more cash flow. Things, as you said, are going great. And at the same time, if something comes along and it happens to be a blowaway number and it happens to fit, we consider it. And that's kind of what we're doing. And the story was an unfortunate leak by people who weren't fully informed. And there it is.
I predicted two years ago in my Puck newsletter that you guys would sell. And you came on this show and said, 'It's too early.' But you're not really saying that anymore. You're saying if the price is right. And there's been speculation — we did a whole episode of the show speculating, you know, maybe Apple, maybe Amazon, maybe Disney or Comcast NBC Universal. Sony is the interesting one because they are moving more into exhibition. They bought Alamo Drafthouse. They just said they were taking over the Cinerama Dome. I've heard that Sony is working on some big deal right now. Is that big deal buying IMAX?
As I said, Matt, I just can't comment.
Okay, but you could say no.
I have to say you're incredibly good at like incrementally getting there.
You could say no, though. And you're not saying no.
Because I don't want to establish a precedent of commenting on these kinds of things.
Okay. All right. That's fair. Sphere is an interesting one because Sphere could start playing IMAX movies in that format if you worked it out in their gigantic, you know, mega IMAX format.
Actually, I'm not sure they could, Matt.
We've looked at playing Sphere movies in IMAX and thought it was a way for them to amortize cost.
Oh, like Wizard of Oz, right?
But that's not the direction that they want to go. But we did, you know, kind of smell around about that idea. But as you know, it's such a different model. The Sphere costs over $2 billion to build. There's one of them in the world. You know, IMAX costs a million or two to build. There are almost 2,000 in the world. You know, the Sphere, although I admire it and it's great, is not close to profitability. You know, we're generating lots of cash flow, lots of earnings. It's just a different business.
Well, and you're not — I mean, just to be clear, if you haven't listened to previous episodes about IMAX, you are not building these theaters yourself for the most part. You are a technology company. You license your technology to the theaters that build them themselves and can then call themselves IMAX theaters. And that brings up a pretty big topic that has been going around this summer. You went a little bit viral for one of your red carpet comments on this subject and that is why the heck are there not more 70mm IMAX film projectors that can project in that 1.43 aspect ratio that Christopher Nolan loves. There are 41 in the world and clearly the demand is there. People are selling these tickets for $300, $400 online for opening weekend. Why can you guys not help them build more projectors?
So, first I'd like to say we are to some extent because Oppenheimer only had 30. Now we have 41. So that's roughly a 30% increase. Second thing is basic economics. One film print at one theater costs $50,000. So you go to CityWalk, you go to 68th Street, each one $50,000. They also have a trained projectionist there. It costs a lot to film with the cameras. So the economics only work in a select number of really high-end theaters.
Meaning, you know, as you know, we're sold out until September, mid-September in a bunch of places. So, you really need high occupancy places, big boxes. The TCL in LA is about $3 million in the last four weeks. Chinese, crazy numbers. So, you need big boxes. You need big box office. And you could do more, but you can't put them at every corner. It just doesn't work. The numbers don't work.
And there aren't that many releases that justify it is what you have said before.
But I think it's a little bit of a chicken and egg thing where if there were more, then there would be more incentive for filmmakers to film in the format and studios to greenlight more of these event style movies and release them more year round.
Right. Well, the good news for you, Matt, is next year we'll have likely four or more films that are IMAX film release released on film.
I don't think we've announced them yet.
Oh, you can do it here. Don't be—
I know. You know, you're so generous the way you offer it. It's incredible.
I'm just curious. Listen, people want to know this stuff. You know a lot more than you say. I know you do.
Well, I pay my legal department a lot to keep me quiet. So, you know, they have to feel worthwhile.
But then why were you able to go up 30% from Oppenheimer to Odyssey if you were able to in 3 years go up 30%. Why can you not go up 30% by the time the next Nolan movie comes out?
Well, as I said, we might be able to go up a small way like that because what we do is we scavenge the world for IMAX film theaters that are out there and a lot of them are theaters that closed a decade ago or something like that and then we rebuild them and we find the parts, we make the parts. Nobody's manufacturing this from scratch right now.
That's the problem. Chris Nolan should do this. Chris Nolan should start a factory and he can sell you all the parts and the projectors and make a fortune.
Chris Nolan is doing a lot for us. I think he's helped us enough. But the point is we have thought of a new idea and this we haven't talked about before where we may be able to get another maybe 10 or maybe another 10 projectors or another 30% sometime next year. But no, I can't talk about it yet. We haven't figured it all out.
3D printers. You're just going to have 3D printers? No. Maybe Elon would help you if you said you would play his historically accurate version of the Odyssey in IMAX. He would probably make some projectors for you.
You know, somehow I don't think that will be a threat to Nolan's Odyssey.
Probably not. But it will be hilarious to see.
This episode is brought to you by Hulu. Another year, another Murder in the Building. Only Murders in the Building is nominated for five Emmy awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy for Martin Short. RogerEbert.com says the cast can make any punchline sing, with The Daily Beast adding, 'Martin Short is at the absolute top of his game.' With additional nominations for casting, costumes, and production design, Only Murders in the Building is for your Emmy consideration. Visit hulu.com/fyc for more information.
Do you get inquiries a lot now from filmmakers who want to shoot entirely in IMAX now that Nolan has done it?
Well, we've had inquiries throughout the years and remember the movie is just out for a month. So, we've gotten some and some people that were shooting in digital have raised the subject. But we have a concerted effort. We're actually trying to persuade filmmakers to do that. We put together a little reel and we're doing a little road show. But as I said, next year there'll be more film releases than there are this year. And we do have some things that are being filmed now with IMAX cameras. But, you know, it's a process. It doesn't happen overnight. As you know, filmmakers plan out films for years before they go into shooting. But I think that that will happen.
Why does someone like Denis not shoot Dune 3 entirely in IMAX? Give us a sense of the added cost like on the Odyssey. How much more did shooting entirely in IMAX add to the budget of the Odyssey?
So the cost I don't think is a big deal. Matt, I don't know the answer, but I would—
You don't know the answer? Like is it tens of millions of dollars extra or is it a couple million extra?
Single-digit millions. So that's not the obstacle. I think some filmmakers are just adverse to trying something new. So if you shot with a Sony Red your whole life, you know, you're not going to switch to doing a film camera. The reloads, as you know, it has very short times until you have to reload. The noise was a problem until, you know, at Chris's urging, we invented a quieter camera with an accompanying blimp so you could do real-time sound recording and the cast can act like they would in front of every camera.
Yeah, that's a good way to put it. It has some alloys that we developed. We worked with Elon and we went to distant planets and we brought it back to create. Now, I made that up.
But you are trying to innovate here so that the filmmakers can feel more at ease to use it because I've seen some shots of Nolan, you know, on the Greek islands and it's a beast, that IMAX camera. It's a pain in the ass to film with that.
So, you know, I obviously I've never filmed with it, but Chris has said to me it's one of the best cameras he's ever filmed with, and he loves doing it, and it's not a compromise for him, you know, and Hoyte, his DP, you know, they love it, and I think Denis likes it quite a bit. When one of the Bonds was shot by Cary Fukunaga using our film camera, he said it was like flying first class and I was sad when I had to go back to coach. So I think the people have ventured out. Ryan Coogler in Sinners had an extremely positive experience and I'd be surprised if he didn't use it again. So I think the negative bent around it is highly exaggerated.
Is Denis going to use IMAX cameras entirely for the Bond movie?
You must know. He must have told you.
I don't know. I mean, he's busy finishing Dune 3. You know, we — I have talked to him about it, but I think that, you know, his script isn't done yet. He hasn't cast it yet. So, I think we just have to see.
Interesting. By the way, apropos of nothing, where are you on the Warner Brothers Paramount merger? This is going to be potentially impactful to you. Two big clients — or not clients but two big studios that put movies in theaters and often in IMAX. They're emerging under the same banner potentially if this is approved. Does that help or hurt you?
So I don't know. I mean, if you and I have learned something together over the years, it's that people who are predicting the future are usually wrong.
I know. But we do it anyways.
Remember when streaming was going to put theatrical out of business? And you do remember that, you know, I think you pied me when you put me on this podcast. I was like the lone voice saying theatrical isn't dead. And I also remind you when we talked about the Paramount merger when it first came out, I said I wouldn't be surprised to see some kind of consent decree come around it. And that's what they're talking about now.
Well, the Ellisons would very much like a consent decree. The state attorneys general don't seem interested right now, but—
Not horsing around. I don't think we know. So, does Paramount sell the physical studio to someone else? And is that someone else who does a lot of films? How do the streamers react to the theatrical windows? You know, how does Ellison react to so many more blockbusters? We have too much content now, more than we can play. Yes, it's easy to see how one studio isn't as good as two on the surface in terms of content, but there's so much change going on in the industry. I'm not smart enough to figure out whether it's good or bad.
It's more like the release calendar, I think, might be impacted where you certainly wouldn't have a situation like Dune 3 and Doomsday if they were coming from Paramount and Warner Brothers going up against each other like that. And IMAX might be able to portion them out better if they're both under one studio.
Yeah, that's a good point. Unintended consequences and it's hard to tell yet.
Because that's your big problem right now. You're too popular amongst the studios. They want to secure those screens as fast and as early as they can to make sure that they can muscle out competitors. And I've said this before with you, it must put you in a pretty awkward situation sometimes.
So the problem, Matt, is being too popular.
I know. I know. But it is an issue for you.
It's a good problem to have.
Although on the opposite side there, Sony got to $360 million worldwide for a Spider-Man movie with exactly zero IMAX screens.
Yeah. I'm sure you've read the data, but their PLF indexing was way below what historically movies of that type have done. And I'm sure they would have liked to have had us. And we're going to do The Beatles with them where we will have that.
Is it true that all four Beatles movies are coming out on the same day in 2028?
You probably have to ask Tom Rothman that question.
