If you really want that big screen, you better be willing to pay big bucks. To get a true home theater experience — an IMAX-style, in-your-face feeling — you’ll have to put your money where your mouth (or rather, eye) is, and be ready to fork over $400,000. At the very least. That’s right, for the price of an entire home, you could get IMAX’s Private Theatre team to build you a cinema of your very own.
The entry-level option, known as the “Palais,” comes with up to 18 seats, dual 4K 2D/3D projectors, a proprietary IMAX sound system, and a media playback system compatible with your TV, games, Blu-ray, and more. As for the screen size itself, that’ll vary based on the setup you choose, but you can expect that you’ll be watching characters that are at least 10 feet tall.
If you’ve got $1 million to spare, you can be be privy to an even more luxurious experience. The screening room becomes much larger, capable of housing up to 40 people. Both this “Platinum” level and the Palais boast automatic daily self-calibration for the best possible picture and audio setup, 24/7 remote monitoring, and state-of-the-art design and architecture of the theater itself.
But if being able to watch films in a larger-than-life setting isn’t enough for you, this might be the clincher — in addition to your Private Theatre, you can also get a separate box for around $10,000 that lets you watch new films as they’re released in actual movie theaters. That means that you can host little premieres of your own and have real screening parties — every host’s dream! Of course, you’ll have to fork over another as of yet undisclosed rental fee per screening, but if you’re already dropping hundreds of thousands (if not millions) on the IMAX itself, you’ve probably got some cash to spare.
‘“It is the perfect marriage of a lot of trends we are seeing in entertainment consumption and our technology,” said Robert Lister, Imax’s chief business development officer, in an interview. “People are demanding content, when they want it, where they want it, how they want it.” And apparently, they want it bad enough to pay a lot of money for it.
