On Thursday, IMAX announced that it has set a new company record. The annual global box office grosses have crossed the last year’s record of $1.032 billion. This huge event has happened before the release of the most awaited movie, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which is set to screen in 1450 screens in 75 countries.
It will be two times in a row that IMAX has grossed over $1 billion worldwide in a year. It has also broken Chinese and overseas grosser records along with the global record. China has amounted to $341 million whereas international grosses amount to $368.8 million.
Breaking all these records, IMAX has set a new record of grosses of local language films with $124 million in 22 countries including Japan, France, India, and Germany.
Blockbuster, in China, The Wandering Earth and Ne Zha, an Oscar-nominated dark horse contender, ranked No. 1 and No. 2. Weathering With You in Japan is an anime film by Makoto Shinkai along with the above two films that have helped IMAX set records in the local language. Avengers: Endgame and Bohemian Rhapsody marked records in China and Japan, respectively. This further added to the records of IMAX.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is set to release this weekend. It will be available in 415 IMAX screens in North America alone and 1035 screens worldwide. IMAX is believed to be the biggest contributor towards the opening weekend and will grow at large with $450 million.
With this level of release, IMAX will enter 2020 with blockbusters films which are No Time To Die, Tenet, Wonder Woman: 1984, Detective Chinatown 3 and Top Gun: Maverick.
Co-founded by William C. Shaw, Roman Kroiter, Graeme Ferguson, and Robert Kerr, IMAX Corporation was developed in September 1967. The purpose of IMAX is to give the viewers a radical change in the style of watching a movie in a theatre.