For Imax CEO Richard Gelfond, the impact of last years Hollywood strikes and a lingering pandemic is in the rearview mirror.
With the strikes and the lingering effects of the pandemic firmly behind us, we are in an excellent position to fully realize the benefits of our strong, asset-lite business model, Gelfond said in a statement as his company released its second quarter financial results.
The second quarter offered strong evidence that we are at in inflection point in our business; we are on a tear with system sales activity, our system installations are up significantly, and the slate through 2026 is as strong as weve ever seen, he added. The strength of Hollywoods box office recovery in the wider exhibition industry was underlined at the film technologies company, even as overall revenue fell 9 percent to $89 million, compared to a year ago revenue of $98 million, with profits of $3.4 million, down 57 percent from a $8.4 million profit in 2023.
Disney and Pixars Inside Out 2 having become the top-grossing Hollywood animated film of all time at the worldwide box office did big numbers on Imax screens in June. That helped Imax postglobal box office of $196.4 million in the second quarter after the June surge of movie releases.
Other second quarter box office performers for Imax included Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Furiosa and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Also during the latest quarter, Imax sold its original documentary The Blue Angels, aboutthe Blue Angelspilots of the U.S. Navy, to Amazon Prime Video.
The film earned more than $2.2 million on Imax screens and delivered the highest-grossing theatrical documentary opening of the year to date for the company. As a measure of future business growth, during the second quarter, Imax said it installed 24 theater systems, compared to 20 systems in the year-earlier period.
Imax said it ended the latest quarter with its 1705 theater locations worldwide, up 4 percent from a year-earlier, and had a backlog of 504 Imax theater systems.