471 Comments

• Digg
• Bury

For over 40 years the Imax brand meant one thing and one thing only: Films made with special Imax cameras and shown on massive 72 foot screens. Those days are over, the Imax brand has been sold and resold again to Hollywood for use in regular small screen theaters. The current owners of Imax have been trying to resell Imax for years and are not focused on making quality products. The result is that movies not filmed using Imax Cameras are being shown on small screens at higher Imax prices. The fake Imax claims digital quality, but there are other digital projections technologies in theaters like DLP Digital that do not charge extra. Some like the Sony 4k digital has higher quality than the fake Imax and also does not charge extra. Star Trek was not filmed using special Imax cameras in the way scenes of The Dark Night were. There is no true Imax version of Star Trek anywhere. If you see Star Trek in an Imax theater, you are not getting the real Imax experience of the past. If the ticket price is the same, the PretendaMax version would be reasonable. To pay $5 to $10 extra for a fake Imax experience is a ripoff. The new Imax owners are hoping the public doesn't understand current digital film technology and falls for the scam. In the late nineties, the Canadian founders of Imax sold their company to Rich Gelfond and Brad Wechsler. Over the next decade these two gentlemen would ruin both the stock price and the beloved Imax brand. The stock price, which traded at $49 in 1999, would drop 99% to 59 cents in 2001. The Imax stock spent the rest of the 2000 decade between $3 and $11, where it currently sits at $7. The original Imax founders spent decades building a beloved brand of quality films made using quality cameras shown on larger than life screens. The new owners, Gelfond and Wechsler, have replaced the founder's forumula for quality with a misguided attempt for more profits. Faced with shareholders that lost up to 99% of their investment in Imax, Gelfond and Wechsler made a desperate attempt to attract more interest in the Imax stock price. Gelfond and Wechsler made a deal with Hollywood to use the Imax name on small screens in regular movie theaters. The Imax founders goal was to use cutting edge technology and provide a quality experience. The Gelfond and Wechsler Imax team's goal is to get the stock price back up. The Imax founders made decisions based on what makes a good movie experience. Gelfond and Wechsler make decisions based on how to make the quickest buck and sell the company yet again. Gelfond and Wechsler's original 5 year plan was to buy Imax from the founders, expand at the expense of brand quality, and re-sell the expanded Imax company at a profit. There have been two fizzled auction attempts. In 2006, Gelford and Wechsler put Imax up for sale a third time. This third round of potential buyers included Sony, but they all backed off when they looked at the books. In 2007, a decade of accounting concerns caught up with Imax. Gelford and Wechsler's team had questionable past revenue accounting processes that resulted in a SEC investigation and six class action lawsuits. So let's recap: Gelfond and Wechsler would do anything to make Imax attractive to buyers. Even if it's questionable. This is proven by the SEC Investigation, six class action lawsuits, and the attempt to use the Imax name on non-Imax quality screens. The new owners have departed from the vision of the Imax founders. They are simply hoping to sell tickets to small screens at higher Imax prices for personal gain.

• Reply