When most people think IMAX, we think crazy stadium seating and a 70-foot screen. However, IMAX has recently been lending its name to smaller, digital projection theaters – theaters that some IMAX partners originally wanted to differentiate as “IMAX Digital.” But IMAX co-CEO Richard Gelfond rejected that idea, and now both the original, 70-foot+ IMAX screens and the new, smaller IMAX Digital screens are both being sold as IMAX, leading to some pissed off customers.
This is the position in which Imax is now putting customers who pay $15 to see Eagle Eye: The IMAX Experience at New York City’s new AMC Empire 25 IMAX digital theater, with its 28×58-foot (8.5×18 meter) screen. They see the IMAX name on the theater and have no idea until after their ticket has been torn and they walk into the auditorium that that screen is about the same size as the one in the adjacent 35mm auditorium, and less than a quarter the size of the one in the AMC Lincoln Square IMAX 15/70 theater, 26 blocks away. The screen in the older film theater is 76×98 feet (23×30 meters). [Above] is a graphic representation of the difference. [via LFExaminer's absurdly thorough article on the differences between the two]
One pissed off customer was Human Giant/Parks & Recreation comedian Aziz Ansari, who urged a boycott of “bullsh*t IMAX.”
At the AMC theatre this was my experience at guest services:
Aziz: Yes, I’d like my $5 back. I paid $5 extra for an IMAX screen and that’s not nearly as big as what I have known IMAX to be.
Guest Services: I can’t sir. Its IMAX quality picture and sound.
Aziz: But the screen isn’t big, that’s the whole reason I pay $5 more for IMAX.
Guest Services: Well sir, you watched the whole movie, you could have come out and we could have given you tickets to a different one.
Aziz: Why would I do that? I’d leave Star Trek, the movie I wanted to see and you’d give me a ticket for Ghosts of Girlfriends Past? Oh yeah that’s fair! No, you need to give me the $5 back, its the principle of it. Can I see a manager?
