In an attempt to pump even more money out of the “Twilight” franchise, Summit Entertainment has announced that the third installment, “Eclipse” will open day-and-date on IMAX screens when the movie opens on June 30th. Traditionally, IMAX fare has been aimed at families and the geek crowd, with movies like “Star Trek,” “Watchmen,” “Terminator: Salvation” and “A Christmas Carol” boosting their grosses in a big way by releasing on the format. The mostly young, female demographic of “Eclipse” hasn’t yet been catered to, but Summit is hoping to change that.
We’re pretty skeptical that the movie will benefit particularly from an IMAX release — those giant screens are made for spectacle, rather than teenagers standing around looking pale, but from looking at a plot synopsis, “Eclipse” seems to be breaking with tradition for the series by actually having a plot (Seriously, “New Moon” is closer to a blog post than an actual narrative), so, if any of the movies so far are worth blowing up, it might be this one (of course none of them were actually shot in IMAX either). Visually talented helmer David Slade (“Hard Candy”) is behind the lens for this one, so it should at least look better than the “X-Files”-Season-One look of the first two films.
The question is, will the fanbase turn out to IMAX screens? Traditionally, the demographic doesn’t care as much about audio-visual presentation as sci-fi geeks, but they have also managed to make the openings of the first two movies into real events, which’ll only be aided by large-format screenings. “Eclipse” will fill IMAX screens for the summer months between the openings of “Shrek Forever After” and “Inception.” (Incidentally, and this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone really, but we were talking to someone a few weeks back who worked on the shoot for “Inception” who, while remaining pretty tight-lipped about the movie, did let slip that, as with “The Dark Knight,” some scenes were shot with 70mm IMAX cameras).