Imax technology is a big part of Sinners’ success – what this tells you about the state of cinema

Sinners, a blues-soaked horror film set in 1930s Mississippi, was preemptively tagged by many film industry insiders as an inevitable flop. But it became a word-of-mouth sleeper hit that continues to draw huge audiences globally, weeks after its release.

On its opening weekend, premium screening formats such as in Imax cinemas accounted for 45% of the film’s ticket sales. Indeed, Imax technology has been central to the marketing of Sinners.

Trailers declared that the film was “shot with Imax cameras” and its cast and crew have discussed their experiences working with this technology in interviews. Director Ryan Coogler even takes us to film school in a ten-minute video where he talks about his love of physical film reels, explaining the differences between seeing Sinners in different aspect ratios – particularly Imax.

Imax is both a filmmaking format and a viewing technology. Imax cameras use large physical film reels and are very unwieldy due to their size, so they’re a rare filmmaking method and are usually only associated with big-budget directors such as Christopher Nolan.

This article is part of our State of the Arts series. These articles tackle the challenges of the arts and heritage industry – and celebrate the wins, too.

Sinners was shot using Imax cameras as well as an Ultra Panavision 70 camera. These cameras shoot in a completely different aspect ratio to normal films. The result is a much shallower depth of field and greater image resolution that allowed Coogler and cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw to best “tell the story with the flat horizon of the Mississippi landscape.”

Imax cinema screens are specially designed to display this immersive, high-quality format. But what many people don’t know is that there are different kinds of Imax.

“True” Imax requires massive screens that use a specific aspect ratio (1:43:1) and special film projectors capable of playing the extra-large film reels. There are only two auditoriums in the UK that fit this description – the British Film Institute’s Imax in Waterloo and the Ronson Theatre Imax screen in the Science Museum – and both are in London.

The kind of Imax you’re likely to have experienced in your local cinema uses digital projectors, and often the screens will vary in size – though they are still bigger than average.

Regardless, the ongoing popularity of high-quality formats like Imax is a result of audiences increasingly seeking out the cinema for immersive, “premium” screening experiences.

The draw of Imax in offering a spectacular, high-intensity experience is a big part of why it was central to Sinners’ marketing campaign. Media academic Leora Hadas, in her book Authorship as Promotional Discourse in the Screen Industries, claims today’s movie marketing is largely about giving a film a distinct identity that makes it feel different among the overwhelming number of entertainment options we can choose from.

It makes total sense to play on Imax’s reputation for quality and spectacle in promoting a prestige film like Sinners. But I think it’s also trying to tell us something even more significant about the value of the cinema space for watching films.

The rise of streaming services has led to many changes in audience viewing habits. We can now access a wide range of content for a monthly subscription equal to the cost of a single cinema ticket.

The traditional model the film industry is built on – where a film’s success is judged by how much money it makes in cinemas – is increasingly precarious. This has caused much anxiety for film studios and cinemas alike, as more and more films are released straight to streaming platforms. Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos even said recently that making films for the cinema is an “outdated concept”.

Crucially, Imax is a technology that can only be experienced in cinemas. After Sinners opened to an explosive US$58 million (£43 million) at the box office globally, Coogler penned an open letter thanking cinema audiences, saying it was “always a film that we wanted to make for audiences in theaters … to entertain you, and move you in the way only cinema can”.

This letter makes his stance on the value of cinema very clear: “I believe in cinema. I believe in the theatrical experience. I believe it is a necessary pillar of society.”

Coogler’s efforts to promote the “theatrical experience” can encourage us all to celebrate the cinema as a space for entertainment, immersion and art. Clearly, his message has resonated: the BFI Imax screen in London has brought Sinners back due to popular demand.

But the film’s marketing strategy also reveals the underlying vulnerability of an industry fighting to survive in an era of competition from streaming services. Imax technology contributes to Sinners’ identity as a prestige film, but it also creates a narrative around the value of preserving the cinema.