IMAX And Chill: Get Your Own IMAX Home Theater For About Half A Million Dollars
For many cinephiles, their home theater is a source of pride. From the flatscreen television to the surround sound system, it's important to experience your movies in the best way possible. Now IMAX wants to help you achieve that goal, at least if you happen to have about a half a million dollars lying around.
IMAX will now build you a private home theater, one that will allow people to pay a premium price to watch theatrical releases from the comfort of their very own expensive movie theater quality home theater. But it's not going to be cheap, and paying for those theatrical releases is pretty damn pricey too. Hit the jump to find out more about the IMAX home theater.
Bloomberg reports that IMAX is targeting high-net-worth individuals, which they consider to be people who are worth more than $5 million, to market their IMAX Private Theater. Their focus right now is on China and the Middle East, but an expansion will soon be coming to the United States and Europe.
However, if you're looking to have your own IMAX home theater in those latter territories, you won't be able to get theatrical releases in them just yet. The IMAX Private Theater in the US and Europe is only to build the theater itself, but it won't get you the $10,000 secure set-top box (IMAX Home Premier) that customers in China and the Middle East are able to use to get theatrical releases in their home. That's because exhibitors are still being stingy with their exclusivity of theatrical releases, as evidenced by the uproar that came after the development of The Screening Room service.
But if you're still desperate for your own IMAX home theater, and you have the money to spare, there are two options. The lower tier theater is the Palais option that will cost you $400,000 for a theater that measures just over 800 square feet. There's also the Platinum system which costs about $1 million and will seat up to 40 guests. Apparently there's also another option called the Prestige set-up that will be about half the size of the Palais, which means it will presumably cost less as well.
Getting an IMAX theater seems a little excessive if you can't use it to watch theatrical releases in your home, but the idea of a home theater like this is excessive by definition so it doesn't really matter. What's cool though is that this system also allows for video gaming and karaoke, so it has uses beyond watching movies that could really spice up your next party
If I had the cash, this is definitely something I would take care of. But for now I'm content with my own television and surround sound system. Plus, I rather enjoy seeing a movie in a crowded IMAX theater on opening night.
For more information on these IMAX home theaters, check out their official website right here.