An \u201cembarrassment of riches\u201d at the box office could fuel a $1.2 billion year for IMAX, CEO Rich Gelfond told CNBC on Friday.<\/p>\n
That volume would mark the best box office haul for the company, which specializes in high-resolution cameras, film formats, projectors and theaters.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s going to be a very strong year,\u201d Gelfond said in an interview with CNBC\u2019s \u201cSquawk on the Street.\u201d \u201cThe first thing that drives that is the slate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gelfond pointed to several blockbuster titles slated for release in the next 10 months, including a new \u201cMission Impossible,\u201d a live-action \u201cHow to Train Your Dragon\u201d film, another \u201cJurassic Park\u201d installment, a sequel to \u201cZootopia\u201d and a third \u201cAvatar\u201d release.<\/p>\n
Hollywood production issues led to fewer theatrical releases and smaller ticket sales in 2024, with box office receipts down 3.4% from 2023 to $8.74 billion. Already, the 2025 slate appears more robust, with more titles and bigger franchise films.<\/p>\n
Aiding IMAX\u2019s lofty box office goals is the Chinese title \u201cNe Zha 2,\u201d which has already garnered $1.6 billion globally. It is the first film to have topped $1 billion in a single country. Gelfond noted that IMAX accounted for $135 million of the film\u2019s total box office.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve done more box office in China in the first six weeks of this year than we did the whole year last year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added that \u201cNe Zha 2\u201d is doing \u201clike $100 million a day,\u201d and that IMAX has accounted for around 13% of the film\u2019s box office receipts.<\/p>\n
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal is the distributor of \u201cHow to Train Your Dragon\u201d and \u201cJurassic World Rebirth.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An \u201cembarrassment of riches\u201d at the box office could fuel a $1.2 billion year for IMAX,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecapitalharbor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecapitalharbor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecapitalharbor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecapitalharbor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecapitalharbor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thecapitalharbor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecapitalharbor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecapitalharbor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecapitalharbor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecapitalharbor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}