Guiyang IMAX GT Cinema Brought To Life By Ne Zha 2

(Qu Honglun/Getty Images)

IMAX is doubling down on 2025 being a blockbuster year

China’s “Ne Zha 2” animation is already breaking records for the company.

2/24/25 9:26AM

Christopher Nolan, the director behind “Oppenheimer” and “Interstellar,” became the first filmmaker to make a feature-length movie with several scenes shot in IMAX with 2008’s “The Dark Knight.” Now, 17 years and six Nolan movies later, it seems more people are catching up with the auteur’s obsession with the format.

Think big

Last Friday, IMAX’s chief exec, Richard Gelfond, reiterated the company’s $1.2 billion target for Imax box office takings in 2025, describing the year’s upcoming release schedule as an “embarrassment of riches,” with a record 14 movies in this year’s “filmed for IMAX” program.

The good news for cinephiles who want to pay a little more to immerse themselves in the largest, clearest pictures in history, or “3-D without the glasses,” as Nolan puts it? There are more places to do so than ever.

According to IMAX’s latest annual report, there were a record 1,807 locations with IMAX systems around the world at the end of 2024, 96% of which were commercial multiplexes. Interestingly, Greater China made up a whopping 45% share of IMAX systems last year, making it the company’s biggest region by far.

That’s already working well for IMAX into 2025. The CEO of the company behind the family of products — which includes high-res cameras capable of handling larger film formats, and the projectors and tech to screen the results across theaters around the world — singled out the recent success of “Ne Zha 2.” The Chinese megahit is the highest-grossing animation in history, with almost $1.9 billion at the time of writing, having demolished the previous IMAX animation record haul set by “The Polar Express” over 20 years ago.

Millie Giles

LEARNING MACHINES

More US teens are using AI for studying. Not all of them feel great about it.

A new survey finds over half of Americans aged 13 to 17 use AI chatbots to help with school.

3d robots working at desks with computers in a repetitive office pattern

Max Knoblauch23h

Apple and Netflix announce a Formula 1 content swap

Just months after Apple signed a five-year, $140 million-per-year deal for US media rights to Formula 1 races, the streamer is sharing with Netflix.

In a rare content swap, Apple TV will allow Netflix to simulcast the F1 Canadian Grand Prix in May. Netflix, in turn, will allow Apple to carry its popular “Drive to Survive” docuseries.

“Drive to Survive” will land on the queues of both Netflix and Apple TV at 12 a.m. PT this Friday.

The docuseries has been a major driving force behind F1’s increasing popularity in the US, with more than half of the sport’s followers crediting “Drive to Survive” as a key reason they became fans, per a 2022 survey.

Netflix and Apple TV Join Forces to Stream Formula 1 Thrills

“Drive to Survive” will land on the queues of both Netflix and Apple TV at 12 a.m. PT this Friday.

Millie Giles2/25/26

Trump’s speech broke the record for the longest State of the Union address ever

Much like the US men’s hockey team as they walked into the House Chamber during President Trump’s address, there would have been plenty of “mention” traders celebrating at least a few of the president’s ~10,600 words on Tuesday evening, including “hottest,” “egg,” and “alien.”

Lasting almost 108 minutes, Trump’s speech yesterday officially became the longest State of the Union address of the television age, per Bloomberg, surpassing the previous record of 89 minutes set by President Bill Clinton in 2000.

According to data compiled by The American Presidency Project, the president’s address was almost double the average length of all recorded SOTU speeches since 1964, which works out as 55 minutes.

The speech also marked what could be a new personal best in terms of length for Trump, beating his remarks to Congress in March 2025 by 8 minutes, though this was not included in the average as, according to the APP, it was not an official “State of the Union” speech.

The APP also calculated a preliminary figure for 2026 in terms of word count, and the current president trumped all other spoken-word SOTU addresses. Some addresses, however, haven’t been verbally delivered, and a couple of the written versions have racked up considerably greater tallies — most notably Jimmy Carter’s 1981 written address, which came in at 33,667 words in total.

Millie Giles

PRESSED FOR SPACE

2/25/26

Will the US government release the alien files?

In the last few weeks, two US presidents have weighed in on the presence of extraterrestrial life — fueling one of America’s longest-held suspicions.