Imax, 3-D Drive Hollywood Box Office in 2015
The box-office success of the latest Star Wars installment suggests Imax and 3-D films are here to stay, along with their heftier ticket prices.
More and more big-budget films are being shot with Imax cameras and presented on gigantic screens. Practically all of [last] year’s major movie productions were offered in both formats.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens, released on December 18, generated a record-setting $529 million in global box-office sales for its opening weekend. And that doesn’t include theaters in China, where the film debuts on January 9.
On its first weekend, [Jurassic World] earned a breathtaking $524 million minimum in ticket sales worldwide.
Imax is synonymous with big-budget, high-action thrillers.
Avengers: Age of Ultron, the latest entry in the superhero franchise, has grossed $1.4 billion in worldwide sales. It was released on May 1.
The year’s top earners included other films released in both Imax and 3-D: Lionsgate’s final Hunger Games installment and Pixar’s Good Dinosaur and Inside Out.
The latter two attracted families with their witty scripts, wonderful colors and masterful animation. But not all Imax films succeed. Ron Howard’s whale of a film – In the Heart of the Sea, about the 1820 sinking of the American whaling ship Essex – underperformed at the box office even though it inspired the great American novel, Moby Dick.
Critics shot it down as a tale without soul, a good example of how a story’s thrills can be lost in visual extravaganza and technical details.
