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Should Imax tell moviegoers the size of its screens?

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As you may remember from our recent coverage, ‘Parks and Recreation’ costar Aziz Ansari caused a huge flap when he put up an outraged post on his blog excoriating Imax after he went to see ‘Star Trek’ at the Imax Experience at the AMC complex in Burbank -- and discovered the supposedly giant Imax screen was barely any bigger than an average-sized theater screen. Feeling ripped off (after all, he’d paid an extra $5), he blasted Imax for ‘duping’ its customers and ‘whoring out their brand name.’ What’s worse, everyone in the blogosphere picked up the story, adding snarky touches of their own, resulting in a full-bore PR disaster for the company.

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It couldn’t have come at a worse time, since Imax is in the midst of a dramatic expansion campaign as it transforms itself from a haven for specialized nature and space films to a preferred fanboy and family destination for high-end, digitally projected Hollywood blockbusters. Imax executives say they are putting Imax technology into two to three new theaters across the U.S. each week. When Imax opened ‘The Dark Knight’ last July, the film played in 94 theaters, all using traditional film projection. When ‘Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian’ opens today, it will screen in 160 Imax theaters, 78 of which will offer digital projection. By the time Jim Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ arrives in December, Imax will be showing the film in roughly 220 theaters. (There are considerably more Imax theaters -- at last count 371 theaters in more than 40 countries -- that show a variety of films in addition to Hollywood fare.)

This growth spurt of new screens is possible because Imax has entered into profit-sharing agreements with various theater chains, allowing the company to speed the expansion of its network by retrofitting existing theaters instead of constructing stand-alone structures. But if moviegoers think they’re getting ripped off, the Imax growth strategy could be severely hamstrung. Perhaps that’s why Imax CEO Richard Gelfond asked me to have lunch with him this week, eager to clear the air about the screen size controversy. (I guess our headline ‘Is It a Big Screen or a Big Scam?’ caught his attention.) Over sandwiches at Imax’s Santa Monica headquarters, Gelfond got right to the point. He continues to insist that Imax enjoys enormous customer satisfaction, backing up the claim with a market-research study that found that 98% of Imax moviegoers had enjoyed their experience at the new, medium-sized theaters as much as at the older giant screens.

But he says he’s taking nothing for granted. ‘The bottom line is -- we’re listening to our customers. We’re commissioning a study from a Hollywood market research firm, who’s going to see how big of an issue this is. Is it just a few bloggers or there is really a bigger adverse audience reaction?’

I’m a little suspicious of polling, since the person or corporation who commissions the poll usually gets the results they want. So I asked Gelfond why Imax doesn’t simply offer more truth in advertising. If the hot button issue is theater size, why not put up signage outside its theaters that tells consumers what size the theater screen is? Did Gelfond have a good answer? Keep reading:

I wasn’t sure at first whether I made any headway. Gelfond initially hedged, saying ‘we’re thinking about doing that kind of thing.’ He was concerned that simply identifying the screen size might be somewhat misleading, since in the retrofitted theaters, the first few rows of seating have been removed, allowing the screen to be closer to moviegoers, which Gelfond says provides an enhanced cinema experience. ‘The screen might only be 55 feet, but in that setting, it looks like it’s 80 feet,’ he explained.

However, when we had a second conversation the day after our lunch, Gelfond was more resolute. ‘I want to be clear,’ he said. ‘We’re going to do something about disclosing information. Period. The market research survey is really just to help figure out what to do, not if we should do something. We are going to give people more information -- it’s just a matter of how and where.’

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That would be good news. Imax is a great format. It doesn’t make a bad movie any better, as anyone who saw ‘Monsters vs. Aliens’ at an Imax theater could attest. But seeing ‘The Dark Knight’ in Imax was a spectacular, totally immersive experience. Moviegoers have been voting with their feet. Gelfond says that even though Imax is only showing ‘Star Trek’ on less than 2% of the film’s overall screens, the movie is doing roughly 16% of its business at Imax theaters. On Wednesday night, ‘Star Trek’ did 19% of its business in Imax.

Gelfond says the company will only install Imax into the largest screen in a theater complex. ‘There has to be a minimum amount of seats and screen capability,’ he says. ‘If we’re not the biggest theater in the multiplex and the location doesn’t meet our threshold, we turn them down. We’ve done it a lot. We don’t cut corners.’ In the past, Imax had a chicken and egg problem -- it couldn’t get enough movies because it couldn’t deliver enough theaters and it couldn’t deliver enough theaters because it didn’t have access to enough films. But today that’s changed, with a host of top filmmakers, including Cameron, Tim Burton and Robert Zemeckis, embracing the format.

‘We take very seriously the responsibility of bringing the coolest movies possible to the Imax screen,’ says Greg Foster, the company’s president of filmed entertainment. ‘There’s a correlation between tentpole and Imax in the public mind and I think the box-office results are bearing that out.’

I have no beef with Imax’s roll-out plan, which is essentially a way to establish itself as a Big Movie Experience franchise. Unlike 3-D, which still largely looks like a marketing hustle, designed to grab more dollars from gullible moviegoers, Imax is a great format for the new breed of tech-savvy filmmakers that have increasingly come to dominate the studio landscape.

But it should use the flap over its screen size as an opportunity to educate moviegoers. If you tell people the size of your screen, they’ll be far less likely to feel like they’ve been oversold once they’re inside the theater. Forewarned is forearmed. It’s not a concept the movie business has often embraced -- they prefer to take your money before you discover how lackluster their latest movie really is -- but it’s a concept that would earn Imax a lot of good will.

PREVIOUSLY: IS IT A BIG SCREEN OR A BIG SCAM?

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