Illustration by Ruby Ash
The next time you walk into a multiplex – or more likely, buy a ticket on your phone beforehand – take a careful look at your options and you might notice what could be called the Reverse Norma Desmond Effect: You’re still small. But the pictures got big.
IMAX, Ultra AVX, D-Box, ScreenX, 4DX, and even some formats that don’t include the letter “x”: Increasingly, the choice to see a film without any supersized bells and whistles is no choice at all.
Last Friday, for instance, at the gigantic Yonge-Dundas Cineplex in Toronto, there was only one “regular” screen dedicated to the week’s No. 1 film, Despicable Me 4, and for only three showtimes. If you couldn’t make those screenings, there were 17 other options for either IMAX, 3-D, or 4DX with 3-D. And all for a higher cost ($26.50 for 4DX 3-D) than a boring ol’ regular screening ($15.50).
Welcome to the Premium Large Format (PLF) era, where you can go big or go home.
Coming out of the pandemic and the heights of the streaming wars, the movie-theatre industry is in a state of what Homer Simpson might call “crisitunity”: The sky isn’t falling, but the sector is at an anxious inflection point that might see fortune for some, ruin for others.
Illustration by Ruby Ash
In the United States, AMC Theatres constantly seems on the verge of bankruptcy. In the U.K., exhibition giant Cineworld – which still owes Cineplex $1.24-billion in damages over its abandoned 2020 acquisition – is closing or offloading a quarter of its sites under a radical restructuring plan. And in Canada, 60 per cent of this country’s indie theatres operated at a loss in 2023, according to a recent report from the Network of Independent Canadian Exhibitors.
But as theatre owners struggle to make it through a roller-coaster summer movie season – one that started off shaky, thanks to a strike-sparked absence of blockbusters, but has since mildly rebounded with such hits as Inside Out 2 and those pesky Minions – there has been a Godzilla-sized saviour on the horizon in the form of PLF screens.
Broadly speaking, PLF is used to define any auditorium that features best-in-class image and sound technology, often alongside such innovations as motion-control seating and panoramic screens. IMAX – a proprietary system of high-resolution projectors, stadium seating and large curved screens with a tall aspect ratio – is distinct from most PLF operators because the company decides which films get access to their screens, and which don’t.
But whether you’re watching a movie in IMAX, Ultra AVX (immersive surround sound, plush seating), Laser Ultra (Landmark Cinemas’ equivalent to Cineplex’s AVX), D-Box (prime-placement seats that shift with the on-screen action), ScreenX (270-degree wraparound screen covering three walls of an auditorium for a peripheral-vision-enhanced experience), or 4DX (multisensory 3-D with movement, environmental effects, scents, bubbles – the full William Castle treatment), you’re participating in the nascent PLF boom. Perhaps grudgingly.
The other weekend, about one-third of Despicable Me 4′s global box-office haul came from PLF screenings. The weekend before that, PLF delivered about 51 per cent of A Quiet Place: Day One’s US$99-million global revenue. The same thing happened the opening weekend of Inside Out 2, in which PLF (including IMAX and 3-D screenings) delivered a whopping 56 per cent of its total box office. This all despite the fact that there are far more traditional than PLF screens in North America. For now.
Last week, South Korea’s CJ 4DPLEX, which developed ScreenX and 4DX, signed a deal with Cineplex to bring three new ScreenX locations to the Canadian exhibition giant, with more to roll out next year. Many ScreenX theatres will be combined with Cineplex’s UltraAVX, to create an “ultra-premium” PLF experience with too many acronyms to count. (Cineplex already has 17 ScreenX locations, and seven 4DX screens.)
CJ 4DPLEX has also developed a new partnership with Landmark, Canada’s second-largest theatre chain, recently opening two new ScreenX locations in smaller markets (St. Catharines, Ont., and Surrey, B.C.) that prove the appetite for PLF extends beyond major urban centres.
While in Las Vegas earlier this spring for CinemaCon – a four-day frenzy of film-industry boosterism hosted by the National Association of Theatre Owners – the CJ 4DPLEX leadership team explained their bigger-than-big picture.
“We’re trying to create an experience that is different from anything else that you can get on a device at home,” says Don Savant, chief executive of CJ 4DPLEX’s U.S. branch. “That’s the beauty of ScreenX – it’s like glass-less 3-D. Or virtual reality without the headset.”
Similar to real-deal IMAX movies – in which filmmakers use IMAX cameras to shoot sequences in the 1.43:1 aspect ratio, as Christopher Nolan did for Oppenheimer, allowing the image to fill the giant screen from top to bottom – a ScreenX presentation requires direct collaboration between CJ 4DPLEX and filmmakers who are looking to “eventize” their productions.
Illustration by Ruby Ash
“When we started ScreenX five years ago, it was a challenge because it’s a very aesthetically driven format and we needed to have this side-view content that matched the centre screen, all with the blessing of the studio and direction of the filmmaker,” says Jun Bang, chief content officer at CJ 4DPLEX. “Our first year, we did four Hollywood films. Then eight. Now it’s 25. We built a studio specifically for ScreenX, with 50 dedicated VFX artists plus producers and tech guys, so it’s 100 to 125 people working on these films.”
“We have great support with the five major Hollywood studios, and the process of deciding which films will get the ScreenX treatment begins at different stages, depending on the project,” adds Savant. “For Top Gun: Maverick, we had those conversations a year in advance of release. Director Joseph Kosinski is a huge proponent, because he had so much 180-degree aerial footage that he couldn’t use, and now we can open that up for him on the side-panel screens.”
From a certain perspective, the proliferation of technology like ScreenX feels like a natural next step in the evolution of moviegoing.
“PLF isn’t so different from what happened in the fifties when television came in and movies went big on VistaVision and Panavision, these superwide screens that the home experience couldn’t match,” says Paul Dergarabedian, a box-office expert and senior media analyst at Comscore.
Practically, moviegoer mileage may vary. After watching the animated kids film Migration earlier this year via ScreenX – not intentionally, but because that screening was the only showtime that worked with my kids’ nap schedules – I found the “peripheral-vision” footage occasionally projected on the side panels of the auditorium distracting at best. More frustrating was my ScreenX viewing of Godzilla Minus One, which felt so needlessly gimmicky that I left midway, waiting for the later IMAX screening.
And then there’s the extra cost.
“There’s a tipping point with PLF, a number where the consumer is absolutely not paying that much for a ticket of any kind,” says Dergarabedian. “It’s not concert or sporting-event levels. But on the flip side, many audiences won’t go see something like Dune: Part 2 unless they know they’re going to get the best possible presentation, and they can push that price point a bit.”
PLF doesn’t only change the math for consumers, but also filmmakers. As the formats grow in popularity and additive experience – CJ 4DPLEX has more than 390 ScreenX and 790 4DX screens around the world – the kinds of movies that actually get green-lit could change. For the past decade, the big studios have been shifting away from middle-budget comedies and dramas – the PLF boom could be the trigger to get them to focus solely on supersized spectacles.
And while diversification might be the watch word in today’s market – every weekend needs one big-ticket item, but also a smattering of smaller, more genre-mixed titles – who is to say what happens in a bigger and (subjectively) brighter PLF future?
This all depends, though, on consumers not becoming overwhelmed. Not only by cost, but by choice.
The average moviegoer still doesn’t quite understand the difference between movies that are “filmed for IMAX” (such as Dune: Part 2, with footage that fills the screen top to bottom) and movies “shot for IMAX” (such as Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning: Part One, whose 2.39:1 aspect ratio doesn’t expand). Toss in formats such as “4DX” or “Ultra Laser” and some audiences might simply throw their hands up in exhaustion and wait until a title hits streaming.
The ScreenX team, though, doesn’t see their brand as a threat to the traditional moviegoing experience.
“More than ever, the theatrical business has to provide a diversified experience, so having the arsenal of ScreenX, IMAX, 4DX, recliner seats, table service, whatever the innovation, that caters to different audiences at different times,” says Bang. “Going into the future, exhibitors will have to differentiate their experiences in order to continuously compete for audiences’ eyeball time.”
Moviegoers will be watching, then – even if that means swivelling their heads 270 degrees.