A reminder before we get to today's show that our next live taping of the town will be on August 27th in Los Angeles with me and a very, very special guest.

We'll be at the L-Rate Theater in L.A. and tickets are on sale now at the ringer.com slash events.

Again, that is Wednesday, August 27th. Just click on the link in this episode description to get your tickets. Hope to see you there.

It is Wednesday, July 30th. If you drive around L.A., you'll probably see a billboard for a new movie.

Fun fact, the studio marketing people often put their own billboards near their own studio lots so the executives can feel good about what they're working on when they're driving to work. I've always found that funny. Anyway, more and more, the word IMAX will be on those billboards, often bigger than the title of the movie itself. It's pretty remarkable. The format is now the bigger draw than the movie. We all know why that is. Movies aren't now considered theatrical unless they are special.

And what signals to an audience that it's special more than IMAX, which costs a few bucks more,

and people associate with premium, large, not your home screen, even though there are far more premium-large

format theaters that aren't IMAX than those that are. For that reason, the business of IMAX has always been

fascinating to me. Remember, IMAX mostly licenses its proprietary technology to theaters. They

don't own the theaters themselves. And it's now at about 1,800 screens around the world,

372 or something in the U.S. In total, IMAX captures about 3.6% of total box office now worldwide on only

about 1% of screens. And in the summer, that percentage goes way up. It could be 15 or 20% on

some movies with the, quote, filmed for IMAX label on it. We'll talk about that. IMAX reported

earnings last week, pretty good numbers, and its stock is up 45% in the past year. There's been news on IMAX lately as well. Universal just did an interesting stunt with The Odyssey, the Chris Nolan movie. They're sold out 70-millimeter IMAX screenings a year in advance. And some of the non-IMAX theaters are a little sick of all the attention in marketing that IMAX is getting. So some of the largest U.S. theater chains like Cynemark, Regal, Marcus, they talked about jointly marketing a competitive big screen theater to blunt the influence of IMAX, according to Bloomberg. So what does that mean? These chains have their own brands like XD, but maybe if they all united, it would be more powerful.

An interesting question,

so it was time to bring back Rich Gelfand,

the CEO of IMAX.

He's been on the show before, always good.

Today, it's the latest on IMAX,

and can the other theaters build their own competitor?

From The Ringer and Puck,

I'm Matt Bellany, and this is the town.

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