IMAX Sees Pent Up Consumer Demand

IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond, discusses the 3Q sales surge, and releasing movies in theatres and streaming services. He speaks with Alix Steel and Francine Lacqua on “Bloomberg Markets.”
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You’re gaining bigger share at the box office. Who is going to
the movies right now. What kind of movies are they watching.

Well everybody’s going in the movies right now. Millennials who
go to the movies Gen Xers are older people are going to the

movies and they’re watching a pretty broad array of movies so
that the turnaround really started in earnest with Shaanxi which

was you know Disney Blockbuster last weekend Dune which is kind
of crosses a lot of lines. Big sci fi movie IMAX did over 20

percent of the U.S. box office on less than 1 percent of that of
the screens bond more older people. An older demographic went to

bond that went then went to the last bond pre pandemic. So I
think it’s pretty much across the board.

But Richard are these kind of viewer ships here to stay or do
people go for the right films. Only.

Let me remember IMAX is in the blockbuster business so it
depends on your definition of what the right film is. You know

over the last decade. Every year take aside the pandemic.
Generally our box office has been going higher and higher on a

global basis. So I think there is no question there’s a
sustained demand for blockbusters. And if you look at

blockbusters as the percentage of overall box office these big
movies keep capturing more and more market share. So I think

people go to IMAX because they want they want a spectacle. They
want something different. They want to feel like they’re inside

the movie. Something that it feels like everyone’s trying to
work out is how long the movie say in the theater before they’re

released on streaming. I mean doing for example was released
simultaneously. James Bond has a lag. Do you have an idea yet of

what that window is going to eventually look like. Sure. And I
think the industry does as well. During the pandemic a lot of

experimentation went on because obviously people for a lot of
reasons couldn’t leave their homes. And there were different

models. So there was one where the F nine from Universal went
directly to theaters and had a window of Warner Brothers release

a lot of its slate day. And they simultaneously on HBO IMAX and
other places like Sony or Paramount said we’re going to wait

until the world is safer. But since the pandemic has
significantly slowed down and people are learning to live with

it almost every studio now has a forty five day window. So we
are Turnbull’s opens in a week with Disney. That’s a 45 day

window. Spider-Man opens with Sony. That’s a 45 day window. Even
Warner which has day and date until the end of the year on their

service said next year they’re going to a 45 day window. So
that’s pretty much become the standard now. And IMAX that’s you

know that’s fine. We typically play movies for only one or two
weeks. So a 45 day window works very well. So Richard how much

market share are you expecting to take. How much bigger can you
get compared to some of the more normal traditional theaters.

You know that’s a difficult question in the post pandemic as you
guys said leading up to this. These our market share has gone

up. And you know as I said during doing it was incredible. It
was twenty three percent of the United States. Now that’s a

special movie at a special time for the blockbusters. The movies
we play we historically have done around 10 percent of the box

office this year so far. And we’re a global company. So we’re an
eighty five countries. We’ve had an increasing percentage of the

box office. Know it just depends on on people’s habits. I think
it’s going to go up for a while because I think if you want to

leave the home you want something really different than the
couch. You’ve been change for the last year and a half. And IMAX

provides that. So tell me then about the expansion plans for
China and Japan as we’re moving out of the pandemic. Did that

affect those plans at all particularly in China. It’s very much
it seems like a zero tolerance policy when it comes to Covid

cases.
It really hasn’t and in fact China was our largest market in the

world during the pandemic. Because even though they had zero
tolerance it was floating. So we have 800 screens in China and

during most of the time
the vast vast majority were open. So there might be 20 closing

at one time. 40 closing at one time. But the way it’s geared up
they open extremely rapidly. So just this last weekend on June

again we did over 20 percent of the Chinese box office on one
per cent of the screens. There were some theaters closed. But

yet the results were extremely impressive. So they just deal
with it differently. We deal with it here. Small closures for

short periods of time.