Ant Bully flop hurts IMAX
low box office contributed to company's 3rd quarter loss
Warner Bros.' box office bomb The Ant Bully hurt IMAX's profits as well. Company posted a $12 million loss for the quarter.
(Source: www.imdb.com)
The Ant Bully's box office failure hurt more than just Warner Bros.' shareholders; it also damaged IMAX's bottom line.
The animated family film only made $7.1 million for the theatre chain, contributing to a $12 million loss for its third quarter.
IMAX had completely converted The Ant Bully onto 3-D. However, the movie's weak opening in regular theatres convinced the chain to only release it in a small number of IMAX theatres. Instead, most theatres kept showing the live-action Superman Returns, which had only been partially converted to 3-D. That movie didn't exactly bust blocks either, netting IMAX $30.8 million.
All these box office woes meant that IMAX posted a $12 million loss, as opposed to a $2.3 million profit at this time last year.
An article in Daily Variety claims that the company is working on a method to lower the cost of converting a feature film to their proprietary format. It currently costs IMAX $30,000 to produce a single print of a movie.
