The next big thing in movies is 60-year-old IMAX tech

0:02Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of seven-story high movie screens. I'm Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, The Verge's senior reviewer, and today we're talking IMAX. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has already been selling out IMAX theaters, and now Spider-Man Brand New Day, which has just had the biggest box office debut ever, is expanding to IMAX 2. So it is a big week if you want to see 80-foot tall close-ups of Tom Holland and Zendaya. But what is it about the 60-year-old technology that is suddenly the hottest thing in movies, other than Matt Damon's biceps? The Verge's TV and film reporter, Charles Pulley-Moore, is going to be joining me to give us the view from the top.

0:43Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:But first, here's what's happening on The Verge today. This is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Thursday, August 6, 2026. Major moves are afoot among Google's AI leadership. Jeff Dean, Google DeepMind's chief scientist, is leaving to start Discovery Loop, where he'll build deeply positive AI systems. Demis Hassabis is out as leader and will become chair and Alphabet's chief scientist. DeepMind's CTO, Kurai Kavachuk-Ulu, replaces him. The Verge's Hayden Field says, this laundry list of executive changes likely signaled deeper issues within Google's AI organization, including Dean's opposition to Google's DoD contract and an overall push towards faster, more product-focused leadership.

1:27Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:Nintendo just made a bunch of money thanks in part to a $300 million tariff refund. The company reported a 150 % profit increase in its first quarter thanks to strong game sales and a whopping big check from the US government. Despite raising prices on Switch consoles and blaming tariffs, Nintendo is keeping the refund. And it's not alone. Sony is also keeping its refunds from PlayStation price increases, and both companies are now facing lawsuits from users. Bose has announced its long-awaited second-gen QuietComfort headphones. The ANC models will be available for pre-order on August 8th for$359 and come in some fun new colors, including a gorgeous deep red rose and a vaguely urine-colored one.

2:13Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:The second gen will feature an upgraded aware mode and new immersive audio listening modes, including head tracking and a simulated theater-like experience. That's going to be fun while you're riding on the subway. You can read more about all of these stories at theverge.com. That's 90 seconds on The Verge for Thursday, August 6, 2026.

2:35Charles Pulliam-Moore:Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

3:16Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. Welcome, Charles. Thanks for joining me.

3:48Charles Pulliam-Moore:Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to talk about the Odyssey IMAX, but also Matt Damon.

3:53Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:Yes. Yay. Excellent. Okay. So let's just start right like 101 film school here. Okay. Tell me what specifically is IMAX other than a big screen?

4:08Charles Pulliam-Moore:So huge screens are obviously like a huge part of the IMAX brand. But IMAX, right? IMAX, TM, encompasses a handful of different proprietary filmmaking and projection technology. So we're talking about the cameras that the films are shot with. We're talking about the specific kind of film that is loaded into those cameras. And then, you know, to the screen of it, we are talking specifically about a very particular kind of hard to build projector. Many of them are very old right now. And then we're also talking about massive, massive screens. Right. We talk about, yes, the IMAX screen is big and we all sort of know we all sort of have a vague idea of what an IMAX screen looks like.

4:50Charles Pulliam-Moore:But like true IMAX, they are these humongous screens that are able to show films in 1.43 to 1, which is just like immersive and really sort of if you are not specifically trying to look around the theater and you are focused on the screen, it is kind of like you're being pulled into the image, which is kind of the the image max IMAX of it all.

5:12Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:Oh, I didn't know that. OK, that makes sense. Great. Image max.

5:18Charles Pulliam-Moore:They were one of the first maxing companies out there. Oh, yeah, and that became a trend. Yeah, they were ahead of the curve.

5:25Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:So I have to admit up front that I am an IMAX virgin. I have never seen an IMAX movie. But quickly, why would I want to see any movie in IMAX? Like, what is the experience going to be like? You mentioned immersive, but is there anything else that's kind of really stands out about IMAX?

5:42Charles Pulliam-Moore:So you're going to get a really high quality picture. And depending on the specific film that you're seeing, seeing something that's shot on 70mm truly can, it's almost hard to put into words. I know that we're talking about The Odyssey right now specifically, but I think the last time that there was a really big sort of public push to go see something that was shot in IMAX, at least partially, was Sinners, right? And the big appeal with that film was that the scenes that were shot, it was like 15 perforations per minute, 70 millimeters, was that it lent itself to these wide, expansive shots of just the country in the South.

6:27Charles Pulliam-Moore:right? It really makes you sort of like feel what it means to have to drive through an old dirt road as you're just like trying to get somewhere. And I think that when filmmakers make the choice to shoot something at IMAX, particularly if they're ideally, there's like sort of an artistic motivation behind it, right? You were trying to depict something at a larger scale that's going to evoke a particular kind of feeling in the audience, right? And I think that really comes to the fore in the Odyssey. It is an epic poem and Nolan goes out of his way to sort of present what he's crafted, much of which is done with practical effects in such a way that makes it look and feel larger than life.

7:03Charles Pulliam-Moore:That's what gets me excited about IMAX. And it's not, you know, just because something's out in IMAX, it's not always, that's not always immediately something that's going to like catch my eye. But when you can tell that a filmmaker has intentionally worked in that format in order for, in order to like strengthen the narrative, that's kind of what I think the format's real, like, draw is.

7:25Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:Well, and I mean, this is a 60-year-old technology. You mentioned, like, these old cameras. Why is it suddenly going through such a resurgence? Is it just because Christopher Nolan is doing it? Or, I mean, I know we had, was it Avatar a few years back? That was a big IMAX. But there hasn't been this amount of buzz. I mean, we've got Spider-Man coming out now. And, I mean, I was doing some research and I heard that theaters for, with true IMAX theaters were selling out like a year in advance. I mean, this isn't the era's tour, people. I mean, why does everyone want to go and see IMAX all of a sudden?

8:01Charles Pulliam-Moore:I mean, I do think a lot of the popularity of the format can be attributed to not just Nolan as an individual filmmaker, but sort of what he has done to draw attention to the format, right? Like The Dark Knight was not entirely shot in IMAX, but there were sequences that were shot that way. In those sequences, you do get the sense that like Nolan's like, I'm going to, I'm making a grounded superhero film, right? This is sort of the beginning of that wave of like, ooh, it's moody and grim, dark and serious. But Nolan was very intentionally trying to make something that could still be a spectacle.

8:34Charles Pulliam-Moore:That's become sort of common and standard in superhero films, you know, in the time sense. But he was intentionally trying to be like, how can I make something that hits you in the face and in the feelings the same way that like a splashy comic book layout can, right? And he has consistently sort of incorporated IMAX cameras and filmmaking into the bulk of his filmography over the years. You see it in The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar, Oppenheimer, right? Over those years, right, as Nolan is becoming more and more of a celebrity director, I think as his star was on the rise, the same sort of happened for IMAX, right?

9:15Charles Pulliam-Moore:He has played a really important role in teaching the public a lot about IMAX. And I think that theater owners are thankful for it, right? As few true IMAX theaters as there are out there, the fact that you have filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, Ryan Coogler out here doing things in IMAX, right? It gets people excited to go to the movie theater. And even if they aren't necessarily going to see something that's projected in 70 millimeters, they're like, ooh, it's IMAX. That's fun. That's great. Right. And as much as we all talk about like, oh, the movies are dead, the movies are back.

9:51Charles Pulliam-Moore:Part of that constant ebb and flow is, well, how many films are coming out that have sort of done a job or done a solid job of capitalizing on the public's interest in that kind of format, right? I keep bringing it back to Sinners because that was a really big part of the marketing push. They went so far as to give out little strips of film as the little giveaway at certain theaters.

10:15Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:Film strip, that's cool.

10:17Charles Pulliam-Moore:But the idea of in the 21st century, people are going to movie theaters and sort of marveling at a film. And then taking a little strip of it home, not the literal thing, but a facsimile of it, that really does remind you like, hey, so everything that you just saw, it's a bunch of images on some film and it's, you know, being projected real fast and that becomes a moving image, right? Like that's, that's cool, right? Like I think, I think that that's something that filmmakers like Nolan have been trying to advocate for, for the general public, like a deeper understanding of an appreciation for film as an art form and what all goes into it.

10:54Charles Pulliam-Moore:Which is, I think really kind of all culminating in the Odyssey in a really sort of like big, bombastic way that everyone can kind of recognize as being like a success, you know?

11:06Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:So this is very much more like about the art form then, like it's, and Nolan is notoriously a Luddite, right? He doesn't use technology at all. He doesn't have a smartphone or anything. I think no email. I think I was, people print out his emails and give them to him. I saw it in the interview. So was this kind of part, is this almost like a musician releasing all their albums only on vinyl. Is it like going back to the kind of core of filmmaking plus taking advantage of this huge screen element? So like, you know, because it sounds like shooting in this format, especially the 70 millimeter IMAX as opposed to, I guess there's two types of IMAX.

11:46Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:You can see the 70 millimeter or there's like digital,

11:49Charles Pulliam-Moore:is that right so it's we can get into that okay so but it sounds like it's a real pain to do the

11:55Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:70 millimeter and this is why this is the first movie ever to have done it entirely so what you know what's why would he choose to do something that's this hard so i think part of it is the

12:06Charles Pulliam-Moore:challenge right um i think that christopher nolan you know he's not a spring chicken anymore he has sort of more than demonstrated his bona fides and at this point in his career he's like what does me working at the height of my powers look like exactly, right? I've sort of proven that I am a capable visual storyteller. We can debate as to whether or not he's particularly great at writing certain types of characters, women in particular, right? But he's like, in as much as I am a filmmaker who puts butts in theaters to see gorgeous tableaus just sort of like exploding all around you, how can I do that in a way that really sort of like challenges me to like step my game up.

12:44Charles Pulliam-Moore:And I think that shooting in 70 millimeter is kind of like, I don't want to say his dream situation, but it's kind of, it's, it's stacked with all of these kinds of challenges that are surmountable, right? They, they can be worked around, but it's going to take, it took a lot of technical know-how and just sort of faith and money, right? Like, um, but like, once you see the Odyssey and take a beat to sort of look into what all it took to put it together, it's like, oh, like that is, that is impressive, right? Like there, there is a thing, there is a reason that people do not shoot on IMAX like this beyond just like the expensiveness of it.

13:21Charles Pulliam-Moore:Cameras are heavy, right? They're really big. They're really big. And you really can't, you're not going to get a lot of dynamic action shots because you can't run with that thing, right? You, it's not going to work that way. They're loud, right? They make a whole hell of a lot of noise. And one of the cool things about, um, about Nolan's production process on this, you have to like wrap or outfit the cameras in blimps, right? In order to muffle the sound, right? So that he could actually do dialogue, right? A lot of Nolan's previous films that feature, that were shot with IMAX, right? Those are like the big loud scenes, right?

13:53Charles Pulliam-Moore:It's not necessarily like a quiet, intimate moment, but for this, because the entire thing is shot on IMAX and a lot of this is, you know, quiet asides, you know, in the throne room while there's someone hiding in the shadows. You had to do all this to the camera, but because it was covered in all this muffling, this muffling exterior, you have to put special mirrors on it so that everyone can get their eyelines right. And it's kind of like, it didn't have to be this complicated.

14:19Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:It's very complicated.

14:21Charles Pulliam-Moore:It did not have to be this complicated, but you listen to or watch interviews with any of the members of the cast and you can see that they were unaccustomed to working like this, right? But, how to put, I'm fascinated by it and really excited about like, oh my goodness, like, why are we doing it like this? I love it, but like, tell me more about how that works. I think that that's a big part of why people are really like glomming onto this.

14:50Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:What would be the difference between seeing this in a 70 millimeter IMAX, of which there are apparently only 40 in the entire world or 41 or something, versus seeing it in a digital, is it digital IMAX or?

15:02Charles Pulliam-Moore:The biggest immediate difference between real IMAX and LIMAX, as people like to call it, But it is the, I don't think that's fair, but.

15:11Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:That's not the official name then.

15:13Charles Pulliam-Moore:No, no, no, no. But I think the biggest difference is literally just the aspect ratio of the screen. It is that tall, tall 1.43 to 1 versus, I don't know the, it's not a 16 by 9 for like for the wide square 9 max, but it's something closer to that. Wider and bigger than what you would get in a regular screen, like in a regular theater, but it is missing some of the visual information that you would get in a true IMAX. In my mind, there's like three tiers. There's like true IMAX and then like the IMAX we all kind of have access to. And then there's just like a regular screening. All three are great, right?

15:50Charles Pulliam-Moore:Like you're going to, I think you would have an enjoyable experience at all of them. Support for the show comes from Even Realities. For a long time, the reality of smart glasses was that they were these bulky, in elegant pieces of tech that were much cooler in concept than really in practice. Well, Even Realities has fixed that. Even G2 are productivity smart glasses designed to keep real-time support right in view. With teleprompting, conversation support, real-time translation, AI assistance, and more, they help you stay on top of work and daily life. And unlike most smart glasses, they're designed to look and feel like premium eyewear.

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