IMAX is doubling down on 2025 being a blockbuster year

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.