Imax is changing the world of cinema — and what movies make it to the big screen in the first place

There were tanking box-office numbers and shuttered theatres. There were Hollywood strikes. There was even Harold and the Purple Crayon. 

But alongside what looked like a cratering movie industry during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was actually a stunning ray of hope. Imax, the Canadian-created and owned technology, has been exploding in popularity, especially as dwindling attendance has spurred fears of audiences never returning to theatres. 

It's part of a longer, but steady process that has, over the decades, turned the brand into a sort of certificate of quality for audiences, and an obsession of studios.

"We 'event-asize' movies," said Mark Welton, president of Imax Theatres. "People want to shoot their movies in Imax … because it means that it's a quality movie. It's a big blockbuster." 

The brand's surprising jump into the mainstream film space all happened relatively recently.

The company was founded in Mississauga in 1967 after four Canadians bought the rights to the "rolling loop" film movement system from an Australian inventor. The technology allowed Imax's massive film stock to be projected onto a giant curved screen, giving viewers a sense of immersion and a unique theatrical experience.

Imax quickly established itself as an educational format with films like 1971's Canadian travelogue North of Superior — a documentary that showcased Northern Ontario and, true to Imax form, culminated in a raging fire intended to offer a sort of terrifying sense of immersion. Movies like this worked to advertise the company as a purveyor of nature documentaries.

And that's how Imax was seen for decades: an interesting oddity to be witnessed in museums, but kept out of mainstream theatres because of the overwhelming cost of building Imax screens, and the additional effort for studios to film with their bulky, expensive cameras that required immense amounts of film.

It wasn't until a push in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Imax CEO Richard Gelfond, combined with a cost-effective shift to digital formats, that Imax began to gain a firm foothold in Hollywood films.

That presence exploded in 2009, with the success of fellow Canadian James Cameron's Avatar, a blockbuster that brought in a $2.92 billion gross, with $250 million from Imax screens. That latter figure alone would have been enough to make it one of highest earning films of the year.

Welton says that, to studios, it helped make the concept of "blockbuster" synonymous with Imax.

There are now 1,800 Imax theatres in 90 countries. But studios still fight for a space in the coveted schedule of Imax movies, which are staggered so they don't cannibalize one another's success. 

It's made for some banner years. As of October, the company had pulled in $239 million globally. That's less than the previous year's total of $347 million, when both Oppenheimer and Mission: Impossible were in rotation. And it pales in comparison to the company's projections for 2025: $1.2 billion.

And of course, Oppenheimer went on to win seven Oscars, including best picture, with director Christopher Nolan and producer Emma Thomas giving Imax multiple shoutouts from the stage, something Welton says he's never seen in his almost 28 years in the industry.