Keeping Imax in Focus

The 3-D Imax film “T. Rex: Back to the Cretaceous” recently opened to good reviews and impressive crowds. The movie, starring ex-”thirtysomething” star Peter Horton, is part of Imax’s push to cross over from educational to entertainment filmmaking. Directed by “Lawnmower Man” director Brett Leonard, the film features impressive digital dinosaurs in a story that combines science fact and fantasy.

While not an instant blockbuster hit like Imax’s 2-D “Everest,” which opened earlier this year to an amazing per-screen average of $63,000 and has grossed more than $50 million in the U.S., “T. Rex” opened to a very respectable per-screen average of $37,000. In its first three weeks, it’s grossed more than $1 million.

But here in the movie capital of the world, those who want to see “T. Rex” are out of luck. Unless they want to drive an hour or more to the Irvine Spectrum or Imax theaters in Ontario, Los Angeles audiences won’t be able to see “T. Rex” any time soon.

That’s because the California Science Center, which operates L.A.’s only Imax-format screen, decided “T. Rex” wasn’t up to snuff in terms of educational and scientific quality. It’s a view shared by many, though not all, science museums around the country, where the majority of large screens are still located.

Jeff Rudolph, executive director of the California Science Center, thinks “T. Rex” tipped the scale too far toward entertainment. “I think the public image of Imax as educational has been based on the places the films were traditionally shown,” said Rudolph, who added the center has no plans to show the film.

“Now, the industry’s changing. . . . Increasingly, there are filmmakers trying to produce strictly entertainment or crossover product. Some are successful, some are not.”

The “T. Rex” controversy says a lot about the future of Imax, which hopes to expand into the commercial arena and move beyond its museum base.

Currently, about a quarter of the 81 Imax screens in the U.S. are in commercial venues, but virtually all the nearly 50 theaters planned for the near future are going that route, including one on the Westside late next year and another at Universal Studios CityWalk in 2000.

“Long-term, nothing is more important to us than our brand,” said Richard L. Gelfond, co-chief executive of Imax. “We want to make quality entertainment. Where you go on the scale between a documentary and something more commercial depends on the subject matter.”

Among Rudolph’s concerns about “T. Rex” is that the film depicts the teenage protagonist, after seeing a sort of magical dust rise from a suspected dinosaur egg, being transported back to the Cretaceous era. Although the reality sequences stress that many things about dinosaurs are unknown, the “living” dinosaur sequences could be taken as representing historical fact. At the end of the film, the ancient dinosaur egg actually hatches.

John Wickstrom, director of film operations for Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, thinks the film could mislead audiences.

“People believe what they see in Imax films is fact,” Wickstrom said. “A particular segment of the audience that ‘T. Rex’ appeals to, elementary school kids, might go away thinking that this is real.”

Gelfond contends that museums should welcome the opportunity to entertain as well as educate. “We think the trade-off between people being stimulated and 100% accuracy is a good one.

“There are real purists,” Gelfond says. “Then there are those who think that raising money and bringing people in is part of their agenda, too.”

Wickstrom and others agree significant money is at stake. Many science museums make the bulk of their yearly budgets from large-screen admissions. The California Science Center doesn’t charge admission to the museum, but gets $6.50 for a 2-D Imax film and $7.50 for a 3-D for adults. Edwards’ Irvine Spectrum, by comparison, charges $8 general admission for 3-D.

Joe DeAmicis, vice president of marketing for the California Science Center, admits the institution will have to “rethink” ways for its Imax screen to remain competitive, with two commercial L.A. Imax screens on the horizon.

“The institutional market gave birth to Imax,” DeAmicis says. “Now it’s up to us to find ways to keep growing our business, by differentiating ourselves from the commercial market.” This strategy may include institutions pooling their resources to fund the production of “appropriate” films, DeAmicis says. He says the the center won’t rule out playing more commercial films, but that those films will be carefully screened for content.

Because of the relatively low number of large-screen theaters and the smaller percentage take of distributors, the distributor--in “T. Rex’s” case, Imax--generally stipulates a minimum exhibition period. A fairly steep upfront rental cost is also charged; for a 3-D picture, that could typically be $50,000.

Cost was one factor, though not the predominant one, in the California Science Center decision to open “Everest” several months after it opened to spectacular business in Irvine, Ontario and elsewhere, according to Rudolph.

“Everest’s” opening in early March fell just a few weeks after the California Science Center reopened. As part of the grand reopening, the center had committed to an extensive promotional and educational campaign surrounding the Discovery Channel’s 2-D feature “Africa’s Elephant Kingdom.” Rudolph felt it would have been too much to debut “Everest” at the same time. “Everest” opened at the center in October and has been sold out for many shows.

It’s not impossible for an independently produced film to open simultaneously at commercial and institutional screens. On Feb. 26, “Encounter in the Third Dimension,” from Los Angeles-based nWave Pictures, is set to debut at Edwards Theater screens at the Irvine Spectrum and in Ontario at the same time it does at the California Science Center’s screen. California Science Center officials plan an exhibit and educational materials around the film, a history of 3-D cinema.

Another alternative for institutions is to play certain large-format entertainment films only in the evening to appeal to an adult audience and keep the fact-based films for the day.

When Imax released the concert film “The Rolling Stones at the Max” several years ago, the Chicago museum initially resisted showing it. “They said they’d never play it, and it was an outrage we even made it,” said Imax’s Gelfond.

But after seeing the film’s success, Chicago’s museum opened the film. It ended up making more than $1.5 million on the Stones picture, making Chicago’s the highest-grossing screen in the country for the film.

“It was a great film, but we had to look at it from the community’s perspective,” Wickstrom says today. “We waited to see how a rock and roll film would be received.”

Unlike Los Angeles, Chicago has two commercial large-format screens as well. But that’s changing; next year Edwards Theaters is scheduled to open a large screen at the Howard Hughes Center near Los Angeles Airport, and Loew’s Cineplex in a joint venture with Universal Studios CityWalk will open its 3-D Imax theater in 2000.

“We want to entertain people. It shouldn’t be an either/or decision,” Rudolph says. “But we consider our films to be an extension of our educational programs. That’s our focus.”