"Dark Knight" fuels bright day for Imax

By Carl DiOrio and Paul Bond

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Imax has been "this close" to breaking big on the film exhibition scene, well, seemingly forever.

So it might ring a bit hollow when executives predict that favorable publicity from Imax's role in the record success of "The Dark Knight" will prove to be a watershed for the giant-screen vendor.

"This is a game-changer for us," Imax Filmed Entertainment president Greg Foster said.

The claim -- made in the heady afterglow of Warner Bros.' record bow of its latest Batman sequel -- is similar to sentiments expressed by Imax executives at various points in recent years, when Hollywood films like "The Matrix" and other big commercial releases started hitting giant-screen venues at the same time as conventional theaters. Yet for all that hype, Imax's usable base of commercially viable screens has yet to hit triple digits domestically.

So why might success with "Dark Knight" finally push Imax into the exhibition mainstream? Two big reasons, potentially:

-- The $158.4 million opening for the latest Batman sequel featured $6.2 million from just 94 Imax screens, or a mind-numbing $67,000 per venue.

-- The unprecedented giant-screen grosses arrive just as the company is making a big push into digital exhibition.

The latter point is particularly important. The digital push is lowering exhibitors' costs on Imax equipment for prospective partnerships -- from $1 million-plus per installation to about $150,000. Building upon favorable publicity from its "Dark Knight" success, Imax hopes to have a much larger installed base of giant screens soon.

It also will help Imax participate more aggressively in the spreading 3-D mania.

The Warners-distributed adventure film "Journey to the Center of the Earth" enjoyed a much better market "hold" this weekend than other holdover titles, primarily because its hundreds of 3-D screens bolstered its overall weekend gross. All of the film's 3-D screens were installed by RealD, a vendor of digital 3-D systems.

EXPANDING THE NETWORK

Forty-year-old Toronto-based Imax operates 160 screens in North America. But many of its screens are in institutional venues considered inadequate to needs of commercial releases, so Warners was limited to 94 venues for "Dark Knight."

In keeping with the exclusive, high-end premise it offers moviegoers, Imax probably will never see its domestic screen count hit 1,000. But executives hope to supplement its current inventory with at least 200 new screens within two years and expect to have about 40 new domestic screens and 10 overseas installations up and running by year's end.

"Within a two-year period, we're going to go from 160 worldwide to at least 360," Foster said. "And my guess is it's going to be more. My phones are ringing today like you can't imagine."

Even if Imax's new installations roll out at the lower end of expectations, Warners should be able to show its sixth "Harry Potter" movie on about 130 or more Imax screens in November.