Why everyone in Hollywood wants their movie in IMAX

Moritz connected his laptop to a conference room television to show Rich Gelfond and his team secret early visuals for “Sonic the Hedgehog 4," in hopes the movie could secure IMAX’s supersize screens when it opens in the spring of 2027.

Such pilgrimages are increasingly common for Hollywood power players.

“This is something that was very important to us, and I wanted to give us the best shot at making it happen," the producer said.

The box office has been in the doldrums for years, with fewer hits, more flops and lower total receipts than before the pandemic. But while domestic total ticket sales are up only 2.6% this year from 2024, IMAX’s are up 16%, according to the company. Its share of domestic and global tickets are at record highs, and its total worldwide box office is on track to exceed $1.2 billion this year for the first time.

Studios now splash the IMAX name on advertisements—sometimes in bigger print than the title of the movie itself—to signal that their release is worth getting off a couch for.

Executives call it the “premiumization" of the film business. It is their version of getting music fans to shell out for every version of Taylor Swift’s latest album or tickets for the Las Vegas Sphere. And until more people start going to movies more frequently, it is one of the industry’s best hopes to keep the lights on.

This month’s remake of “The Running Man" was originally scheduled to be released Friday, but Paramount postponed it a week to secure IMAX screens committed this weekend to “Predator: Badlands."

For June’s “F1," director Joseph Kosinski persuaded the company to commit to two exclusive weeks after promising his racing scenes would use the entirety of the oversize screens. Some 15% of the movie’s $630 million global box office haul came from IMAX, which accounts for fewer than 1% of screens worldwide.

“IMAX used to be for a narrow set of audience members," the director said. “Now when people talk to me about ‘F1,’ they always mention IMAX. They know it’s the most different from what they can get at home."

The company’s 1,759 global screens, including 424 in the U.S. and Canada, have become a hot commodity. That is why producers like Moritz work to land them far in advance and why Gelfond has transformed from an avuncular dealmaker into one of Hollywood’s most sought-after arbiters of power.

“I’m an optimistic guy, but I never imagined we’d be in the middle of the Hollywood ecosystem the way we are now," said the 70-year-old, who works primarily out of IMAX’s New York offices.

Gelfond was an investment banker and founded a dry-cleaning business before taking over IMAX in a 1994 leveraged buyout. The struggling company primarily showed documentaries in museums at the time. Its movies had to be shot on loud, clunky cameras and could only be projected in specially constructed theaters.

The company developed the capability to adapt digitally shot films to its large-screen format and converted existing movie theaters to play them. Its big breakthroughs included 2008’s “The Dark Knight," the first commercial release with sequences shot on IMAX film cameras, and 2009’s “Avatar," which grossed $235 million on its screens.

Gelfond bet back then that enlisting top filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, who has made all of his hit films since “The Dark Knight" for IMAX, was key to his company’s future. Today he has a Rolodex of A-list directors that would make many talent agents envious. On a recent trip to London, Gelfond visited the sets of Michael B. Jordan’s “The Thomas Crown Affair" and Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia" movie and met with Sam Mendes about a quartet of Beatles biopics he’s planning for 2028.

Theaters own the IMAX screens, but Gelfond and his team typically determine what plays on them. That can mean multiweek exclusive global runs for potential blockbusters like December’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash" or divvying up screens, as “Wicked: For Good" and “Zootopia 2" will do over Thanksgiving.

Tickets for IMAX screenings typically cost $3 to $5 more than standard ones, and the company keeps an average of 18% of the box office grosses they generate.

It is one of an array of premium formats now available in theaters, all of which have been outperforming the overall box office. IMAX is the most lucrative and the one studios and filmmakers fight hardest to secure.

The company’s slate for 2026 is packed, and 2027 is filling up fast with tentpoles including “F1" director Kosinski’s “Miami Vice" remake, a “Legend of Zelda" adaptation, sequels to “Minecraft" and “Frozen," and possibly Moritz’s “Sonic."

Fights over what plays—and what doesn’t—on the company’s screens are getting increasingly contentious. When Universal Pictures executives dated “Jurassic World Rebirth" one week after “F1," the studio asked if it could have IMAX screens for its dinosaur sequel. But Gelfond stuck to his commitment for the racing film.

“We have an ironclad rule at IMAX, which is that our word is our word and we won’t mess around with that," the CEO said.

“Narnia" is following an unusual release plan: two weeks just on IMAX screens next November, followed by a two-week pause before it streams on Netflix. Gerwig wanted her adaptation of the C.S. Lewis book to play in theaters despite Netflix’s typical online-first policy. The streaming giant’s leaders agreed to make an exception because IMAX screens are sufficiently distinct from home viewing.

If the experiment works, other directors will probably ask for similar treatment.

“We’ve found that the passion of the filmmaker is the most important thing in selling the IMAX experience," Gelfond said.

Write to Ben Fritz at ben.fritz@wsj.com