With more foreign investment, India can build movie industry quicker

After struggling for years to be accepted by filmmakers and theatres, IMAX has now become one of the hottest technology brands. Vanita Kohli-Khandekar spoke to its New York-based CEO RICHARD GELFOND in a video interview on IMAX's place in the global cinema ecosystem and its India plans. Edited excerpts:

- RICHARD GELFOND

What is the role IMAX plays in the global cinema ecosystem?

One, we create events out of content which could include movies, concerts or sporting events. We just did the Olympics opening ceremony live. Second, we are a curator of global content. We work with the best film makers all over the world, the best studios.

Can you take us through what happens, say if I am a studio releasing Avatar 3?

A filmmaker could make a film either with a regular digital camera or an IMAX camera. Then we would work with a studio in distributing it globally. We design the theatre with a certain aspect ratio, so that it's much more vertical than a traditional letter box making for a very immersive experience. We manufacture the projector, which is almost exclusively laser.

When we put it in, we wire it to a global system where we monitor every theatre (IMAX is on 1,800 screens globally) in real time 24/7. Every morning, we reset the sound, make sure the bulbs, circuit boards are working. If something is broken, we call our maintenance team to fix it. We get an upfront payment from the exhibitor. And we get 18 per cent of the global box-office as a technology royalty.