Et Tu, IMAX?
How very tired I am of Hollywood economics being discussed only in relation to how a distributor or exhibitor's performance does or does not better position them to get bought by a larger company
Did everyone who spent the last few years hyping up a certain IMAX-or-bust mentality for tentpole releases and global box office potential just get Speed Racer-ed? Moviegoers of taste and culture know what I’m referring to. It’s the dramatic low point of the Wachowski sisters’ modern classic. After winning a big cross-country race, Speed and his family realize that they’ve been duped. The motive wasn’t about preventing the Togokahn family’s business from being bought out by Royalton Industries, but instead to juice the company’s stock price ahead of that inevitable merger. It’s a jarring moment, and it comes to mind as The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that IMAX, noting no comment from the company as of Friday evening, is putting itself up for sale.
This puts a darker spin on word that the Thanksgiving week slot, beginning November 25, previously reserved for Netflix’s Greta Gerwig-directed Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, will go to an IMAX-only run — before its December 23 SVOD premiere, the David Fincher-directed, Quintin Tarantino-penned, and Brad Pitt-centric follow-up to Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. While again noting that these are all big corporations that don’t love you back, AMC (with no word yet on whether Regal’s IMAX auditoriums will play along) is prioritizing a studio that doesn’t depend upon, and whose existence has been an existential challenge to, theaters over legacy studios that make theatrical profitability even remotely possible. Now we must wonder to what extent IMAX is merely fattening itself up for “slaughter.”