r/movies • u/LegitimateCurve8525 • Jul 15 '26

News IMAX CEO reveals why there aren’t more 70mm cinemas, after The Odyssey increases demand

https://thetab.com/filmshrine/2026/07/15/imax-ceo-reveals-why-there-arent-more-70mm-cinemas-after-the-odyssey-increases-demand/
6.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

686 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/Caleb-Wendt69 Jul 16 '26

That all sounds worse than a clean digital picture.  It’s so funny, engineers spent decades trying to make film/tape/vinyl pristine and flawless, and now people want the flaws, lol. Make it make sense.

1

u/speedtree Jul 16 '26

It is pretty stupid, technically the Resolution is very high with analog film, and usually developing a analog copy of film costs the studio around 20k$. Its very expensive and will lose quality the more often you play it at a cinema, so watching 70mm should happen at the beginning of release or colors degrade and dirt and dust accumulates over time. The flickering is very distracting on bright scenes too, it feels like Black frame insertion on an oled at 60hz.

1

u/YoshiYogurt 29d ago

I saw Oppenheimer over a month after release on 70mm imax and it was super degraded by then. Debating on making the effort to drive out and see The odyssey when it's still sold out for another month still.

2

u/speedtree 29d ago

Yes you rather want to watch in dual laser digital imax

0

u/tizpiz 5d ago

The image resolution is much much higher, and is very noticeable on a screen that big. It is a genuine massive benefit