Can't Get an IMAX Ticket? That's Kind of the Point.

**Ryan Knutson** (0:05)
The biggest movie playing in theaters right now is The Odyssey.

**Richard Gelfond** (0:09)
No one could stand between me and home.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:14)
I only live in God's.

**Ryan Knutson** (0:16)
It's made by the superstar director Christopher Nolan, and it features a star-studded cast. But what might be getting more buzz than the film itself is how the film was made. It was filmed specifically for IMAX.
IMAX is most famous for its huge screens. It has sharper picture quality and better sound. But what makes The Odyssey unique, even when compared to other IMAX films, is that Nolan used 70-millimeter IMAX film cameras to shoot every frame. These cameras are relics. Many of them were built in the 1960s, and there's so few of them now that Nolan and IMAX actually had to create new camera hardware just to make The Odyssey possible. But if you're hoping to see The Odyssey in its full 70-millimeter glory, good luck. There are around 1,800 IMAX screens in the world, but only about 40 of these locations have 70-millimeter film projectors.
A couple of days ago, I spoke with IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond. He took over IMAX all the way back in the 1990s, and transformed it from a niche technology into a heavy hitter in Hollywood. If you're listening on Spotify, by the way, you can also watch a video of this interview. When I spoke with Rich, I told him that I would like to pay to see his movie, but can't. He said, that's kind of the point.
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knutson. It's Thursday, July 23rd. Coming up on the show, a conversation with the CEO of IMAX, on how this technology is taking over Hollywood.

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**Ryan Knutson** (3:08)
All right, well, do you want to just start out by introducing yourself?

**Richard Gelfond** (3:10)
I'm Rich Gelfond, CEO of IMAX, and I've been here for about 33 years.

**Ryan Knutson** (3:16)
So I want to talk about a little bit of the origin story of your company, because you're sort of an unlikely pairing with IMAX. You had worked as a lawyer, and then you ran a chain of dry cleaning stores, and then you eventually got into investment banking, and you had this investment firm. Can you tell me the story of how you first came across IMAX, which at the time in the 90s was like a science project technology. It was in museums and science theaters and stuff like that, but it was not part of Hollywood. So when did you first come across this technology, and in what ways did it inspire you?

**Richard Gelfond** (3:48)
It's a great story that's very little known, so I'm glad you asked about it.
So I did a few investments in different companies. I did leverage finance, some LBOs and some other things, and environmental testing business, nothing that had a thread through it. And one Presidents Day weekend with my family, I went to the Smithsonian in Washington, and there was something called an IMAX theater. And I took my kids to it, and we saw it, and I thought it was really amazing. Do you remember what it was playing? Yeah, Two Fly, which is one of the first IMAX movies ever made, and it was, I don't know, it was made 50 years ago. But it was really amazing.
It was about vehicles that fly balloons and planes, and I got the last seats, which are in the front row. So it was quite realistic, and I thought, just this is pretty cool, and my kids liked it. And then I went back to New York the next day. And because I was sort of entrepreneurial, I'd get books from investment banks about different things that were for sale, different kinds of companies. And right at the top of the pile was a book, someone was selling IMAX. And I thought, boy, that's an interesting coincidence. I never heard of it until I went to it the day before. And now a book pops up and a very long story made very short. It was very interesting, the attributes. And we thought, gee, if this works so well in institutions like the Smithsonian, and it works so well with kind of documentary content, is this something that we could move out in a bigger way with Hollywood films and commercial multiplexes?