Kyle Risdell

This time of year, Thanksgiving-ish onward, is typically when we got a lot of new movies, films that the studios are banking on to be their big holiday hits.

And whether you're itching to see the new Wicked movie or whichever number Avatar sequel this next one is going to be, you're going to have a decision to make.

To IMAX or not to IMAX.

They are just a fraction of the screens in this country.

But movies shown in IMAX are a growing share of box office sales.

And thus, those screens are something of a hot commodity in Hollywood.

Ben Fritz wrote about the big appeal of the very big screen in The Wall Street Journal the other day.

Ben, thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me.

Tell me, would you, first of all, what it is that makes IMAX so special, such a big deal?

And yet they are a vanishingly small fraction of the movie theater screens in this country, right?

Which makes it treasured real estate that directors like Christopher Nolan, who we'll get to in a second, really want.

The company, though, is really interesting because it didn't used to be this way for IMAX.

Interesting.

So speaking of going to Hollywood, Christopher Nolan, Dark Knight, right, was a biggie for him.

They shot some of that in IMAX.

And then most recently, people will, of course, remember Oppenheimer shot in IMAX and there were, you know, fights over screen time for that.

It's, as I said, a rare piece of real estate that directors really want.

So how do they do it?

I mean, not everybody is Christopher Nolan.