The sun never sets on the IMAX empire. The theater chain has been on an aggressive expansion kick of late, solidifying its foothold in foreign markets such as Russia and Japan. On Wednesday, IMAX announced another plum — China.
The company will partner with Lumière Pavilions, a private movie exhibition chain in China, to install three digital IMAX theater systems in the People’s Republic.
Under the terms of the deal, the first system is scheduled to open at the Lumiere Pavilion in the city of Chongqing at the end of 2010. The second system will open at the Guangzhou Cultural Centre (Tai Ko Hui) in downtown Guangzhou in August, 2011 and the third system will open at a yet-to-be determined location in 2012.
With this latest contract, MAX theaters will now have 57 theaters up and running in China by 2012. Though there are still several months left to go, IMAX has nearly tripled the number of systems signings this year that it had it had in all of 2009. So far the company has announced 95 system signings compared to 35 last year.
