Not every big movie gets the giant screen. Some open in IMAX day-and-date; some are shut out and win it back later; some never play it at all. So we are counting: of every event movie — the films that actually took over a week at the U.S. box office — what share played IMAX, and did they open there or back into it? With 419 of 437 event movies from 2006–2025 now classified, a few clear patterns are already visible — and this page keeps filling in as the last 18 titles get sourced.
Three ways a film meets IMAX
- Opened in IMAX — on the giant screen from its wide release. Most modern blockbusters, and every film shot with IMAX cameras (Avengers: Infinity War was the first film shot entirely on IMAX cameras, in 2018).
- Added IMAX later — not in IMAX at launch, but it got a run afterward. The textbook case: Barbie (2023) was locked out of IMAX by Oppenheimer’s 70mm run, then took a one-week IMAX victory lap that September.
- Never — owned a week, but never played IMAX. So far this is horror and mid-budget titles (Get Out, Annabelle: Creation).
The trend: IMAX went from niche to default
Chart the classified films year by year and the shift is obvious. In 2006, only 1 of the 11 classified event movies played IMAX — about 9%. By 2010 that was already up to 68%. Today, in most years, 3 out of 4 event movies (or more) play IMAX in some form.
The turning point lines up with The Dark Knight in July 2008 — the first Hollywood feature to shoot with IMAX 15/70mm cameras, for roughly 28 minutes of runtime. Before that, IMAX screens mostly ran documentaries and the occasional re-release; across the whole industry, only about nine films used the format at all in 2008 (seven of them event movies, by our count). Christopher Nolan’s film proved IMAX could be a mainstream storytelling tool rather than a novelty, and industry-wide adoption climbed fast — to roughly 39 films by 2012. Our own trend line tracks that same climb. The one dip in an otherwise rising line is 2020, when theater closures and a scrambled release calendar cut the number of event movies playing IMAX from 20 in 2019 to 11 — before the format snapped back the following year.
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Break the classified films out by tier and the pattern sharpens further. The giant screen isn’t just a modern default — it is bought almost automatically for the biggest titles, and remains a coin flip for the smaller ones.
Phenomenon-tier films (61.8%+ of a week’s box office — think Barbie, Avengers, Star Wars) play IMAX 96% of the time once classified: 51 of 53. Major events run 80%. Plain Events — the films that clear the bar but don’t dominate — play IMAX barely more often than not, at 59%. Studios appear to reserve premium-format release strategy for the titles they expect to be the biggest, which is also a bit self-fulfilling: an IMAX release itself boosts a film’s box office share.
Opening day, or a later comeback?
Of the 299 classified event movies that have played IMAX at all, all but 6 opened there. The full list of comeback films: Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk (2008), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (added January 2018), Halloween (2018), and Barbie (September 2023). Notice the early cluster: in 2008 and 2011, IMAX screen counts were still small enough that even Marvel’s biggest titles sometimes had to wait their turn. By the 2020s the format had scaled up enough that being locked out at launch — as Barbie was, by Oppenheimer — is the exception rather than the rule.
Superlatives
- First IMAX event movie: Superman Returns, June 2006 — the earliest film in our index to own a box-office week and open in IMAX the same weekend.
- Non-IMAX Phenomenons: only two films have ever taken over 61.8% of a week’s box office and skipped IMAX entirely — Unhinged (2020, a pandemic-era release into a depleted marketplace) and Tom & Jerry (2021, an HBO Max day-and-date family title with no premium-format push).
What’s still pending
18 event movies from 2006–2025 don’t yet have a sourced IMAX status — mostly older, smaller-tier titles where studio press releases and Wikipedia’s IMAX release lists are thinner. As those get classified, the percentages above will move slightly, though the shape of the story — a rising trend, a 2008 turning point, and a strong tier gradient — is unlikely to change. This page updates automatically as our enrichment closes that gap; when all 437 are classified, it will convert into a complete year-by-year and tier-by-tier analysis.
Method & sources: event-movie status from the USA Times Event-Movie Index (Box Office Mojo weekly domestic charts); IMAX status from Wikipedia film pages, IMAX Corp. releases and studio/trade reporting, classified per film. Part of the 20-year event-movie index.
