Signing you in

IMAX has long been sold as the gold standard of movie experience in India, and audiences have been willing to pay for that promise. Depending on the city, theatre and showtime, a regular IMAX ticket typically costs anywhere between Rs 400 to Rs 1,200, while opening weekend shows for major releases can climb well beyond Rs 2,000, with Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey recently pushing premium seats to Rs 3,400 in Mumbai and Rs 2,500 in Delhi-NCR. When people are paying that kind of money for a cinema ticket, it's only fair to ask a simple question: what exactly makes IMAX different, and are we really getting the same IMAX that Nolan shoots his films for? So what exactly are you buying when your ticket says IMAX?

Grab a tea, this one needs a bit of unpacking, but we promise, by the end, you'll be the one explaining it to your friends at the multiplex. What actually is IMAX?IMAX, short for Image MAXimum, isn't a technology one studio invented and moved on from. It's a standalone, publicly traded company (NYSE: IMAX), founded all the way back in 1967 in Montreal by a group of filmmakers inspired by the giant multi-screen displays at Expo 67, who then spent years building a single-projector system that could do the same job better. Today it's run by long-time CEO Richard Gelfond, and it doesn't just sell projectors and walk away. IMAX enters long-term partnerships with cinema chains, effectively co-designing the auditorium itself, the screen placement, the acoustics, the whole room, often funding a chunk of the installation in exchange for a cut of ticket sales going forward.

None of that explains what you're actually seeing on screen, though. For that, let's park the company discussion and look at the shape of the picture itself.Forget the jargon, think of it as a window

Every film has an aspect ratio, simply the shape of the rectangle you're watching it in. Wide and short, or tall and roomy. That's the whole concept people spend YouTube videos over-complicating.

Picture a normal window in your house, waist height, running along the wall. That's an ordinary cinema screen: the 2.39:1 scope ratio that roughly eight in ten films and eight in ten Indian screens are built for, the shape cinema settled on in the 1950s to make theatres feel bigger than the boxy TVs people had at home.

Now picture a mason knocking that window open, upward, both ways: more glass above and below, same width. You haven't moved, but you can now see the treetops and the ground that used to be hidden. That's what an IMAX screen does to a film: not a different picture, just more of the same picture.

Here's the trick nobody tells you when you're booking tickets: IMAX written on your ticket doesn't describe one thing. It's shorthand for three completely separate decisions, made by three completely different people, at three completely different stages of a film's life. Was it shot on an IMAX camera? Was it projected on an IMAX projector? Is the screen actually IMAX shaped? A film can tick just one of those boxes and still legally call itself IMAX.

Only around eight to twelve of these physical cameras exist on the planet, hand-built, rented out by IMAX itself rather than sold, because nobody else can service them. That scarcity is the whole ballgame.

This is where most Indian cinemagoers lose picture quality without realising it. There's entry-level digital (2K xenon, stuck at 1.90:1), mid-tier digital (sharper 4K laser, still 1.90:1), and the real deal: a dual-laser GT projector or an actual 15/70mm film projector, both capable of the full 1.43:1 image.

India doesn't have a single top-tier projector or film, running commercially anywhere. All roughly 30 IMAX-branded screens in the country, from Mumbai to Delhi to Bengaluru to Chennai to Coimbatore and Kolkata, use the smaller 1.90:1 shape. Still a good cinema. Just not the format Nolan built The Odyssey around.

This is the part people notice most. A genuine true-IMAX auditorium isn't a bigger version of a normal hall, it's built from scratch as a steep, stadium-style room where even front-row viewers look almost straight up at a screen that curves around them. India's one true example, at Gujarat Science City in Ahmedabad, runs close to 95 feet wide and 66 feet tall. Most commercial IMAX halls in India, by contrast, are ordinary auditoriums with the front wall knocked down and a somewhat bigger 1.90:1 screen pushed forward a few feet: same floor, same seats, same room.

Even India's largest digital IMAX screen, at Miraj Cinemas in Wadala, Mumbai, tops out around 72 feet wide, respectable, but nowhere near true scale, and built inside a retrofit rather than designed for it. Gujarat Science City's screen is reserved for documentaries, so it isn't really an option for anyone wanting to watch a feature film.

That's why simply upgrading the projector can't fix an old multiplex hall: the room itself isn't tall, steep, or close enough. Getting there means building from scratch, which is exactly the expensive problem keeping true IMAX out of India's malls.Was this always the case?

Prasad's Multiplex in Hyderabad opened a genuine 70mm IMAX auditorium in 2003, briefly one of the biggest screens on Earth, and in 2014 the last place in India to watch Interstellar in its full, intended glory (roughly 75,000 people packed the 600-seat hall in a single month). But flying physical film reels from the US, and the rising cost of a dying format, made it unsustainable; by late 2014 the projector was gone. Two more true IMAX auditoriums, in Ghaziabad and Kolkata, closed around the same time.

There's a twist, though: Indian director S.S. Rajamouli is reportedly shooting his upcoming epic Varanasi natively in 1.43:1, something no Indian film has attempted, and has been vocal about wanting a true IMAX screen ready in Hyderabad by release. So the story isn't necessarily that India never gets a real IMAX. It's not yet.

Part of this also comes down to how IMAX makes its money. Getting a film onto an IMAX screen isn't purely a technical decision; it's a commercial one. Filmmakers typically have two routes. They can join the Filmed for IMAX programme, planning the taller IMAX frame from the outset using IMAX-certified cameras, or they can finish the film conventionally and later put it through Digital Media Remastering (DMR), IMAX's proprietary post-production process that enhances the picture and remixes the sound for IMAX exhibition. Either way, IMAX earns a share of the film's IMAX box office, making the format as much a business model as a filmmaking standard.

The financial commitment, however, differs significantly. Filmed for IMAX doesn't require an upfront licensing fee to IMAX, but productions must rent approved camera systems and share a percentage of their IMAX box office revenue. DMR, on the other hand, is a paid post-production service that reportedly costs around $1 million to $1.5 million for a major feature, although large studios sometimes negotiate different commercial terms. That's why many films carrying the IMAX logo were never actually shot in IMAX. With that in mind, let's look at the three decisions that ultimately determine the IMAX experience.The takeaway, for the next time you're booking a ticket

You don't need to feel conned buying an IMAX ticket in India: you're still getting a genuinely bigger screen, sharper projection, and better sound than your neighbourhood's single screen, and for most films that's a real upgrade. What's worth knowing is that IMAX is doing three different jobs at once, and in India today, two of those three, the projector and the screen, are capped in a smaller shape. Only the camera occasionally reaches the top tier, in the handful of scenes Nolan or Rajamouli shoot that way.