The big IMAX rip off.

In September 2008, Richard Gelfond, co-CEO of Imax Corporation, told members of the Giant Screen Cinema Association that “we don’t think of [IMAX] as the giant screen.” Rather, he said, “it is the best immersive experience on the planet.” The company takes this position because it has chosen not to differentiate its new digital projection system in any way from the 15/70 film systems it has been installing in giant-screen theaters since 1970. This despite the fact that, according to Imax VP Larry O’Reilly, its two major digital partners, AMC Entertainment and Regal Entertainment Group, both originally wanted to brand the new screens as “IMAX Digital.” And based on the reaction Gelfond’s announcement received in New York (and on many conversations I’ve had since) many, if not most, institutional IMAX operators would prefer this as well. In short, virtually all of Imax’s customers and partners would like to see a distinct new identity for the digital system. But Gelfond flatly rejected this possibility, offering an absurdly flawed analogy with BMW automobiles. He said that the German carmaker offers the 7-series line of larger, more powerful, luxury models as well as the smaller, entry-level 3-series cars. “People don’t say ‘The 3 isn’t a real BMW because it’s smaller.’” Of course, this ignores the fact that the model numbers, to say nothing of the prices, clearly distinguish BMW’s different product lines in consumers’ minds, while maintaining the unity of the brand. No car buyer believes he has bought a $125,000 760Li only to receive a $30,000 328i.

Let me make one thing clear: I am not opposed to digital projection in principle, or to the IMAX digital system in particular. I think the change to digital projection in the giant-screen world is inevitable. And I fully admit that the IMAX digital system is superior, in certain respects, to some other digital systems. But I object when anyone claims that two patently different things are the same. Where I come from that's known as “lying.” And call me naïve, but I don’t believe that any company whose business plan is based on deceiving its customers can succeed with that strategy for very long. Imax Corporation, whose very name means “image maximum,” has spent four decades persuading the public that that name is synonymous with “big,” with giant screens, with an experience that is completely unlike that of conventional multiplex cinema. If, for perfectly understandable business reasons, Imax now has to move into those smaller screens, let it distinguish this new product from the other screens in that theater, as a “premium multiplex experience,” as Sydney’s Mark Bretherton has suggested. But expecting the ticket-buying public to believe that that experience is identical to one on a screen three or four times larger is insulting. People who have been to a true giant-screen theater will realize they have been misled, and will be disappointed, if not angry. Those who haven’t will wonder what the big deal about IMAX is, and will assume that any real giant-screen theater they come across in the future has nothing better to offer and perhaps never will have the real IMAX Experience.