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It’s not exactly a secret that IMAX and PLF (Premium Large Format) screenings have generated an increasing share of worldwide box office over the past decade, and with this year’s IMAX releases of The Odyssey and Dune: Part Three, 2026 will be no different. We’ve come a long way from the IMAX screening of The Dark Knight I saw in 2008 where one of my fellow attendees loudly complained “The screen is too big!”
I still think an IMAX presentation of a film shot in IMAX is the best bang for your buck. I’ve seen movies in Cinemark’s XD and Regal’s nightmarish 4DX and neither comes close.
One format I always wished I’d experienced was MaxiVision48, a production and projection format that many cinema luminaries promoted, especially Roger Ebert who praised it effusively over the years:
No matter what you’ve read, the movie theater of the future will not use digital video projectors, and it will not beam the signal down from satellites. It will use film, and the film will be right there in the theater with you.
Unfortunately, contra Ebert, MV48 was not able to overcome the concurrent rise of digital projection. Had MV48 been unveiled just a few years prior, things might have turned out differently!
If you’re interested in a full breakdown of this tech, YouTuber Callum Vandenberg has a great video explainer:
Nobody Wants to Wear a Headset
HTN-heads know of my bemusement over VR headsets, in particular wallet-busting ones like the Apple Vision Pro. As I very correctly wrote on the AVP’s launch over two years ago:
Will it be an industry-changing device like the iPhone? That’s less certain to me. Until the technology can be worn like a pair of sunglasses instead of a heavy, clunky headset with limited battery power, it won’t achieve any sort of mass adoption, price point or not.
Sometimes I really can call it! While the intervening years have brought us some interesting potential applications for VR wearables like gaming or correcting lazy eye, the headset increasingly seems to me an attachment to sci-fi portrayals of virtual reality instead of how VR and AR would actually function and be used in real life.
Over at his excellent newsletter Lowpass, journalist Janko Roettgers has an interview with a former Apple employee who worked on the Vision Pro and stated as much:
“What we learned looking for sources of surprise and delight with interactive characters in mixed reality is that the headset is actually not the best [device] for this kind of thing,” he says.
“I still think it's a pretty fabulous piece of hardware,” Drummond says. However, headsets can also be alienating, and separate viewers from the world and from the people around them. “It's kind of lonely,” Drummond says. Having an AR app on a phone, on the other hand, makes it much easier to show it to others. “People can lean in over your shoulder,” Drummond says.
Kernels (3 links worth making popcorn for)
Here’s a round-up of cool and interesting links about Hollywood and technology:
The cameras and lenses behind this year’s Cannes lineup. (link)
Sony’s AI camera assistant marketing was a bust. (link)
Is the MacBook Neo good for gaming? (link)