Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is playing in IMAX cinemas worldwide, but viewers wanting to watch the film in its intended 70mm IMAX format have only 41 theatres to choose from. The reason is not limited demand or a marketing strategy, but a decades-old technology challenge: IMAX has not manufactured new 70mm film projectors for around 50 years, leaving the company to rebuild and retrofit ageing machines.Explaining the shortage, IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond recently told Variety, “There’s certainly more demand. The problem is they haven’t made new IMAX film projectors in about 50 years. So we retrofit them [and] rebuild them, and part of our strategy is to see how far we can take it.” The scarcity means only a small number of theatres globally can screen The Odyssey in true 70mm IMAX format.
A technology that dates back to the 1960s
IMAX is often associated with modern blockbusters, but the technology was developed in the late 1960s. Most cinemas have gone digital over the years, and the number of venues that could show large-format 70mm IMAX film has slowly dwindled.Today, most IMAX theatres use dual 2K digital projectors with a 1.90:1 aspect ratio, which are comparatively easier to manufacture and maintain. By contrast, 15/70mm IMAX projectors are specialised mechanical systems built for large-format film and require dedicated infrastructure to operate.The machines themselves are considerably larger than conventional film projectors, standing over 5.5 feet tall and nearly 6.5 feet long, weighing around two tons. They also use high-powered xenon lamps that require separate cooling systems.
Why replacing these projectors isn’t easy
Unlike digital projection systems, 70mm IMAX projectors are no longer manufactured at scale. As the film industry transitioned to digital formats, many of the companies that produced components and the expertise required to maintain them also disappeared.Describing the challenge, Redshark News wrote, “Simply put, a 15/70mm projector isn’t just another mechanical assembly you can spin up on a modern production line in a factory somewhere. It’s a bespoke engineering solution to a bespoke physical problem, and that solution was designed for, and built in, a manufacturing era that ended decades ago.”As a result, IMAX now refurbishes and upgrades existing projectors instead of building new ones.
The film reels are equally demanding
The equipment is only one part of the challenge. A feature-length 70mm IMAX print is significantly larger than conventional film reels. Individual sections are shipped separately to cinemas before being hand-spliced together over several hours into a single reel.A 2.5-hour IMAX film print stretches nearly 10 miles, weighs about 550 pounds and costs approximately $36,000 to produce. Since The Odyssey runs for nearly three hours, its print is even longer.Any failure in the projection system can be difficult to repair because replacement parts and technicians familiar with the equipment are limited. This combination of ageing machinery, specialised engineering and declining manufacturing capacity has left only 41 theatres worldwide capable of presenting The Odyssey in its intended 70mm IMAX format.
