A Chat With Imax’s CEO On How Global Box Office Dynamics Are Shifting

Imax is riding high.

The cinema technology company reported strong second-quarter financial results Thursday, showing a 139 percent surge in profit as its global box office sales climbed 41 percent, year on year, to $281 million. From films like Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning to Brad Pitt’s F1 and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, the key to Hollywood’s recent theatrical revival has been big-screen spectacle — and the brand synonymous with the giant theater experience has been reaping the rewards. On just over 400 screens in North America, Imax delivered over 20 percent of the opening weekend box office performance for Sinners, F1 and Final Reckoning. 

A 10 percent slice of gross “used to be the high end of what we delivered on major tentpole releases,” Imax CEO Richard Gelfond said on Thursday’s earnings call. “Now that’s just business as usual.”

A lesser-discussed driver of Imax’s growing global strength, however, sits far afield from the company’s core partnerships with the Hollywood studios. 

In recent years, China and Japan, the world’s second- and fourth-biggest box office territories, have seen a marked shift in audience preference towards local filmmaking over imported Hollywood fare. In Japan, where Hollywood has routinely taken at least half of the box office, local Japanese films earned $1.01 billion in 2024 — about 75 percent of the market — while imported titles slumped to $329 million. In China, Hollywood’s market share slipped to about 20 percent last year — the lowest in well over a decade. A similar, though less stark, transition has been in evidence throughout Southeast Asia, as well. 

Imax has stayed a step ahead of this shift by working with foreign studios to bring more local-language filmmaking into the Imax format, while building out its theater network into ever further reaches of the globe. The biggest commercial movies made in China, Japan, India, South Korea — and even Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia or Vietnam — are now often released in Imax. 

This strategy will be vital to Gelfond’s stated target of delivering a record $1.2 billion in global box office in 2025. On Thursday, the CEO revealed that local-language films accounted for approximately 40 percent of Imax’s global box office in the first half of 2025, up from about 20 percent in recent years. As Asian ticketbuyers increasingly opt to go local, they’re still ending up in Imax theaters. 

The trend was on full display last weekend, when the anime tentpole Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle shattered Japanese box office records. A sequel to Japan’s top-grossing anime feature of all time, Infinity Caste opened to a record $49.4 million, including $3.5 million generated from just 59 Imax screens. Imax has contracts in place for 15 more locations in the country, and says it expects to ink a record number of deals for further installations before the end of the year.

Imax is also capitalizing on anime’s surging global popularity overseas, with plans to roll out Infinity Castle in more than 40 global territories starting Sept. 12. North America is included, as are key markets across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Oceania.

The Hollywood Reporter connected with Gelfond earlier this week to discuss the network effects driving Imax’s increasingly diversified global strategy.

Let’s talk through the drivers of Imax’s recent success and strength in Japan. There’s been a steady expansion of Imax locations in the market. I understand you have 55 now and 15 more in backlog, and you’re expecting to sell a record number of agreements for new theaters in 2025. What’s been driving this growth — particularly from the perspective of the Japanese exhibitors who are your partners?

I’ll try to put it into context. Typically, when you go into a new country, the exhibitors say, “Well, maybe it works in Korea and it works in China, but it won’t work here.” That’s phase one. Then you get your first partner, and the numbers do indeed work. So you go to that partner and say, “You should do more of them.” And the partner sort of says, “Well, I have all the time in the world to figure it out when I want to put more in.” And then they continue to do well, so they gradually put a couple more [theaters] in. Then their competitors start to notice, so the competitors put a couple locations in too — and they see that it works. Now, you have competition, with your various partners starting to compete to get geographic zones before their competition builds there. We’ve been in Japan for a long time, so the business is at this state of self-generating interest. 

In Japan, there was the additional factor that the local content has done very well [on Imax], especially anime. So then you had not only the Hollywood films, but also local tentpoles, and local studios — some of whom are also in the exhibition business in Japan — wanting more theaters. It was a self-fulfilling dynamic: more theaters led to better results, not only in Hollywood box office, but Japanese box office, and that led to the demand for more locations. 

Let’s talk about local-language filmmaking in Imax. You’ve been ahead of the global theatrical market’s recent trend towards local. It’s been a striking swing — last year, Japanese films took something like 75 percent of the box office overall, and Hollywood’s share fell to around 24 percent, which is a historic low. What do you think is driving that tilt toward local content in Japan? Has the Japanese industry’s committed efforts to protect windowing for their filmmaking played a role?

Local-language, in general, for the first half of this year, is around 40 percent of our global box office — which is an incredible amount. If you think of any other global entertainment company, they’re not even close. In the last couple of years, we’d been around 20 percent. So, diversifying has been a big part of our strategy. 

Increasingly, it’s not only local-language filmmaking targeting its home country; it’s also local-language exported to other countries. There’s no better example of that than Japanese films. The first Demon Slayer was a smash hit in Japan, but also all around the world. This year, we released a 4K restoration of Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mayoki, and it earned $4 million in its opening weekend in North America. Two other somewhat recent anime titles, The First Slam Dunk and Suzume, earned more in China than they did in Japan. So it’s both factors: the attractiveness of Japanese films to the Imax audience in Japan, and our ability to tap into other international audiences. That incentivizes Japanese studios to release through Imax not only in Japan, but globally. And that keeps the film pipeline growing.

I’ll give you one more example. A couple of years ago we approached Studio Ghibli about Miyazaki’s last movie, The Boy and the Heron, and said, “Why don’t you do it in Imax?” Miyazaki was quite used to his traditional distribution patterns, as I’m sure you’re aware, so it ended up taking our team a long time. It was not an easy sell because of his preference for the historical way of doing things. But then he not only looked at the numbers of how well we perform with anime in Japan and internationally, we also did a lot of tests showing him what the content would look like. Once he saw the Imax visuals and the numbers it could generate, everything clicked. That generated another great piece of filmmaking for us — and, no surprise, the film was very successful for everyone. 

The increase in Imax local-language releases abroad has given you a unique diversification among theatrical players. When U.S. studio filmmaking has a soft quarter, you can offset that with strong performance elsewhere — as you did with the animated mega-blockbuster Ne Zha 2 in China in Q1 this year (the film brought in a historic $2.08 billion, with $164 million earned in Imax). It makes the Imax platform feel more like Netflix than the traditional U.S. studios. How are you looking to drive this trend further? Where do you see potential to expand local-language release volumes in Imax— Indonesia, India, elsewhere?

Well, we’ve done local-language in 10 different countries, so far: Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia, France and we have one coming very soon in Germany, as well as others. So it’s definitely a replicable model and that’s part of our strategy. And with no disrespect to your question, we may have gotten to some of these countries before Netflix did. I think Netflix may have followed the Imax model a little bit.

Hollywood used to represent around 80-90 percent of the global box office. Last year, it was in the 60-70 percent range. So, I think Hollywood has been a little myopic about streaming. They’re so focused on streaming that they’ve lost market share in their core business. We saw those trends and tried to compensate by increasing local-language content.

The increase of production values in local-language filmmaking around the world has helped us too. A lot of this local stuff has become a lot more Imax-worthy. As local-language market shares have gone up and Hollywood has slipped, the studios in individual countries have more money to invest in production and distribution — and Imax versions. So again, it’s that self-fulfilling momentum. I believe that some of what we’ve done in these countries will translate into more of their product being exported globally — and that also helps us grow the network.

And that kind of diversification also flattens out the calendar, right? Chinese New Year is Q1, which is a slower season for Hollywood. I suppose that helps your global programming during a traditionally weak period and improves margins.

Exactly. The cinema business, and Imax especially, builds capacity for peak times. So at slower times of the year, local-language helps improve your global margins — because you’ve solved some of the underutilization issue.

Do you see further diversification potential — especially in East Asia — in live events? I know you’ve done K-pop concerts, eSports and other formats in some of these countries. Where do you see growth potential and how do live events compare to film releases, economically?

We screened the League of Legends world championship final last year in China at over 150 theaters, and it was near capacity. We pretty much sold it out — at prices that were higher than typical cinema prices. And in Japan, we’re looking at a number of alternative content and live event opportunities. 

Segueing to China specifically, how do you view that market for the rest of the year? Ne Zha 2 was a phenomenal success and Imax was a major participant. But since then, there’s been a prolonged slowdown. The people I speak to in the industry there are quite worried about the lack of any significant hits since Ne Zha 2.  Does it concern you that the business might be becoming reliant on just one or two massive titles per year?

Well, we were beneficiaries of some of the Hollywood movies that did well very recently — Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning did pretty well for us in China and F1 is in the middle of doing quite well. Over the next month or two, the local-language slate looks considerably stronger than it was in Q2. A Writer’s Odyssey 2 and Dongji Rescue are both coming soon. And later in the year, we think Zootopia 2 has significant potential. The first one did incredibly well in China and inspired Shanghai Disneyland to build a Zootopia-themed land. So we think that one is well positioned. And then there’s Avatar 3, which, as you know, is a very strong franchise in China, especially on Imax. But I do think the market in China is going through a transition. It’s about getting the right local titles and the right Hollywood ones that best fit China. We’re always trying to get better at programming the right ones.

What I hear from people in the market is that they’re not quite sure what’s behind the downturn throughout last year and much of this year — Ne Zha 2 aside. Is it the content, short-form video and changing entertainment consumption habits, or challenges stemming from China’s economic slowdown?

It could be some or all of the above. But I’m skeptical of the short-form video part, because Ne Zha 2 was so recent and so successful — it’s proof that for the right product, people will show up. The challenge is identifying the right product. We were pretty confident about F1 — it was something original and different. Mission was a known and strong franchise in China. That’s why I feel good about Zootopia 2 and Avatar 3.

Where are you looking for your next stretch of growth? 

We’re feeling very good about Indonesia. We’ve doubled our network there — we were at 10 last year, and now we’re at 20. I think we have 20 more in backlog. It’s an exciting moment in that market. Southeast Asia broadly is doing much better — Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore. That’s a combination of improved demographics and the rise of local-language content, like we talked about. And we continue to be very excited about Japan. We’ve had a team on the ground in Japan for over 20 years and those relationships have borne fruit. There’s always more we can do together. The last Demon Slayer did about $30 million in Imax. Infinity Castle comes out on Sept 12 in North America and we’re leaning into it heavily. We have very high hopes for it globally.