World-class tools, national partners: localizing IMAX in the contemporary Chinese film industry

Since 2017, China has been the largest market for the IMAX widescreen cinema format, surpassing the United States and Canada; its IMAX screens comprised 45% of the company’s global network in 2024. This reach, developed over two decades, makes IMAX the most successful example of Western penetration of the Chinese film industry, despite Hollywood studios’ well-documented ambitions to break into the market. Expanding research on global interests in the Chinese media industries to the film exhibition sector, this article analyzes trade and popular journalism, financial reports, and cinema statistics to outline IMAX’s trajectory in China during the 2000s and 2010s. I show that IMAX has localized its business by intertwining itself in the activities of Chinese filmmakers, studios, cinemas, and financial interests, successfully framing itself as an ally to the modernization and globalization of China’s national film industry. To build these relationships, I argue that IMAX has relied on and reinforced its image as a politically neutral technological tool that can elevate international films and facilities to a world-class cinema standard. My research explains how these intertwined industrial and discursive strategies have enabled exhibition technology companies to expand their global business and exert renewed influence over local film industries.