The new 70mm IMAX screens will be located at Cinemark Seven Bridges in the Woodridge suburb of Chicago; Cinemark Carefree Circle in Colorado Springs; and Cinemark Tinseltown in Rochester, New York. In addition, Cinemark will upgrade its 12 existing IMAX screens in the U.S. and South America to IMAX with Laser, plus build four new IMAX with Laser screens in the U.S.
As the theater business fights to compete with streaming, investment into IMAX reflects a strategy of bigger and better quality that you can’t get at home. It also aligns with a trend toward event cinema, which peaked with “Barbenheimer.” Writing for The A.V. Club in 2024, Charles Moss—”one of only 50 projectionists worldwide recruited by IMAX to show Oppenheimer in 1570 IMAX print”—recalled the near-celebrity status attained by projecting the film at Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theatre and the fans who traveled up to 1,400 miles to see the coveted version of the film. It’s no easy feat either, as Moss explained that “the 70mm print format meant hours of splicing prints together by hand, constant equipment maintenance, and if a film crash occurred, the perseverance to repair it, which sometimes meant spending the night in the booth.”
But Christopher Nolan would argue it’s all worth it. “The sharpness and the clarity and the depth of the image is unparalleled,” he told the Associated Press in 2023. “The headline, for me, is by shooting on IMAX 70mm film, you’re really letting the screen disappear. You’re getting a feeling of 3D without the glasses. You’ve got a huge screen and you’re filling the peripheral vision of the audience. You’re immersing them in the world of the film.”
