IMAX 70mm theaters in malls: where America’s rarest screens are

Opening in IMAX 70mm on July 17, 2026: Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Select shows went on sale one year in advance.

Tickets for select IMAX 70mm screenings of The Odyssey went on sale on July 17, 2025, a full year before the premiere. Opening-night allocations at many US venues sold out within hours. A year-ahead ticket sale is demand for both the film and a specific screen.

IMAX 70mm film projection is the rarest exhibition format in commercial cinema. Only a few dozen venues worldwide hold the projectors, the trained staff and the physical film infrastructure to run it. Exact counts vary by source and by release, because studios negotiate the print list film by film, but the order of magnitude does not change: this is a format measured in dozens of screens, for a global box office measured in billions.

Many of those screens sit in retail real estate. Of the US venues selected for The Odyssey, a substantial group operates inside malls, retail centers or mixed-use entertainment districts. For the properties that hold them, the screen works as an anchor in the strictest sense of the word: infrastructure that customers cannot substitute anywhere closer, attached to a trip that includes parking, food and additional dwell time before and after the screening. When a release like The Odyssey sells out a year ahead, the demand lands on a known shortlist of buildings.

US malls with IMAX 70mm theaters

Venue selection per the expanded US list compiled by Engadget; mall matching by Malls.com. The full 70mm print list also includes standalone landmarks, museums and institutional screens not shown here.

The format hierarchy, briefly

Digital IMAX covers the widest network. IMAX with Laser improves brightness, contrast and projection consistency, while selected dual-laser venues can preserve the full 1.43:1 frame. IMAX 70mm remains the rarest commercial presentation because it requires a working 15/70 projector, trained projectionists and a physical film print. It is also the format Christopher Nolan shoots for natively: The Odyssey is the first feature filmed entirely with IMAX cameras. That is what turns a projection spec into a destination.

The malls that hold the format

Four Simon properties appear on The Odyssey’s current US IMAX 70mm venue list: King of Prussia in Philadelphia, Opry Mills in Nashville, Mall of Georgia in the Atlanta metro and Arizona Mills in Phoenix. Regal and Harkins operate the screens, but the destination effect accrues to the surrounding buildings. The same release places four properties in one portfolio on the destination map. [internal links: four directory pages]

Providence Place holds a fifth enclosed-mall position: Apple Cinemas Providence Place is the only New England venue on the expanded US list. [internal link: Providence Place directory page]

The list extends beyond enclosed malls into retail and entertainment centers. AMC Metreon anchors the downtown San Francisco complex of the same name. Regal Irvine Spectrum sits inside Irvine Spectrum Center, one of the highest-traffic open-air centers in California. Regal Hacienda Crossings in Dublin operates within a Bay Area retail development. Even where the building is not an enclosed mall, the rarest screen in cinema keeps choosing retail real estate.

The international mall screens

The geography repeats outside the United States. In Canada, Scotiabank Theatre Chinook operates inside CF Chinook Centre, Calgary’s dominant regional mall. In Prague, the Cinema City IMAX at Palác Flora is one of continental Europe’s few active 15/70 venues, inside a shopping center. London’s two 70mm addresses, BFI IMAX and the Science Museum, are institutional exceptions. Where the format is not in a cultural landmark, it is usually in retail real estate.

Where premium cinema is getting new capital

These projects are not additions to the IMAX 70mm list. They show where operators and landlords are investing in the premium-screen tier beneath it.

Diriyah Square, Riyadh. Majid Al Futtaim is building a VOX Cinemas multiplex of roughly 7,600 square meters inside the planned 400-brand district, per Diriyah Company. Premium screens enter the project as day-one anchor tenancy rather than a retrofit.

Promenada Bucharest. NEPI Rockcastle’s 300 million euro extension, the largest project in the company’s pipeline, places a new cinema and a theatre in the anchor line-up of a vertical development running from seven floors below ground to eleven above, with opening targeted for April 2027, per the company’s project update.

Each project treats cinema as a destination use rather than residual space.

What this means for operators

Premium-format releases give the venue more control over where demand lands. A film that audiences will drive past ten multiplexes to see in one specific building converts a release date into scheduled, place-bound traffic. The landlords holding that infrastructure get the spike with every tentpole cycle: The Odyssey from July 17, Spider-Man: Brand New Day from July 31, and every large-format release after them.

The film creates demand. The screen decides which building gets it.

Methodology and sources

Venue lists compiled from IMAX and exhibitor announcements for The Odyssey’s 70mm release, as reported by Engadget and ScreenRant in July 2026, cross-referenced against shopping center directories. Venue counts vary by source and by release window; this review covers key mall-based locations rather than claiming an exhaustive census. Project details per Diriyah Company and NEPI Rockcastle. Mall data: Malls.com directory.

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