The premium format fight between Disney and IMAX just resolved itself, and it turns out there was never much of a fight to begin with.
IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond confirmed on Matt Belloni’s The Town podcast that Star Wars: Starfighter and Avengers: Secret Wars are both getting IMAX releases, which makes Avengers: Doomsday and its Infinity Vision rollout the exception, not Disney’s new strategy.
Gelfond Confirms Avengers And Star Wars For IMAX
Belloni asked whether Infinity Vision will become Disney’s primary way of promoting the event status of its movies. Gelfond answered with the 2027 slate.
“I don’t think so, Matt, because we’ve talked to Disney a lot,” Gelfond said. “So next year with Disney, we have a lot of movies, including Star Wars with Ryan Gosling, one of their premier [franchises]. And by the way, at the end of next year, we’re doing Avengers.”
Belloni sounded caught off guard by the Avengers reveal, responding, “Oh, you are? Oh, that’s fun.”
Gelfond only said “Avengers,” but the calendar does the rest. The only Avengers movie at the end of next year is Avengers: Secret Wars, dated December 17, 2027.
Star Wars: Starfighter, the Shawn Levy movie starring Ryan Gosling, opens May 28, 2027.
Gelfond also revealed IMAX is carrying the Avengers: Endgame re-release this year, with Disney running it in Infinity Vision at the same time.
“I think they’ve determined it’s in their best interest to market it as a separate event and lean into IMAX for their big tentpole movies,” he said. “We view it as fine. If they like to do it, great. And they’re leaning into us as well. So we’re fine with it.”
Infinity Vision Is A One-Movie Workaround
Belloni has been treating Infinity Vision as a running joke, opening the interview by telling Gelfond the podcast “is now being presented in Infinity Vision.”
His intro was blunter. Disney was so fed up with the IMAX shortage and being unable to secure IMAX screens for Avengers: Doomsday that the studio “made up Infinity Vision, their own name for the other premium large format screens.”
Gelfond didn’t argue with the history. “It’s not that they didn’t like it, which they obviously didn’t,” he said. “It’s that they couldn’t have it. And you know the Disney organization pretty well. They like to have a lot of things.”
The lockout traces back to scheduling. Doomsday was supposed to open in the summer of 2026, then moved to December 18, right on top of Dune: Part Three, which had already secured an exclusive three-week IMAX run. As for what caused the delay, Belloni offered two words: “The Russos.”
Gelfond described how Disney arrived at the workaround. “Looking in their own mirrors, they said, ‘It probably would be great if we could have IMAX, but we can’t. So what’s the closest thing we could do?’ And the idea was to take pre-existing large format, whatever that is, so everything with an X, and then put a secure process of certification, which is in a black box. I don’t know what it means.”
Belloni filled in the blank: Infinity Vision is “whatever PLFs they can get that are of the higher quality PLFs.”
That echoes what IMAX CFO Natasha Fernandes said back in May, when she called Infinity Vision a marketing play to offset not having the IMAX brand on Doomsday.
And here is the detail that fully deflates the format war framing: IMAX is still playing Avengers: Doomsday in China.
IMAX Is Too Busy Breaking Records To Care
Gelfond spent the rest of the interview sounding like a man who can afford to lose one December.
IMAX just posted its fourth consecutive weekend over $50 million worldwide, a first for the company, which Gelfond noted had never done more than one $50 million weekend in a single year.
The Odyssey, now Christopher Nolan’s biggest movie ever, is on track to become the highest-grossing release in IMAX history. Gelfond said 2026 will top 2025, which was already the company’s best year on record.
The one that got away still came up. Belloni pointed out that Sony launched Spider-Man: Brand New Day to a $360 million opening weekend without a single IMAX screen.
Gelfond countered that the movie’s premium large format numbers ran well below what movies of that type historically do, adding, “I’m sure they would have liked to have had us.” IMAX gets its Sony event movies back with the Beatles films in 2028.
“Take That To The Bank” On Starfighter
Gelfond has visited the Starfighter set and is putting his prediction record on the line for it, calling the movie “a throwback to the Harrison Ford kind of Star Wars” and telling Belloni to “take that to the bank.”
The rest of the 2027 IMAX slate Gelfond named includes Dune: Part Three playing into the new year, Frozen 3, and The Thomas Crown Affair with Michael B. Jordan. He said about two-thirds of 2027 is already booked in advance, something that has never happened before.
The premium format war made for a fun narrative. It lasted exactly one movie.
Release Info
Avengers: Endgame returns to theaters September 25 in IMAX and Infinity Vision.
Avengers: Doomsday opens December 18 in Infinity Vision, and in IMAX in China.
Avengers: Secret Wars follows in IMAX on December 17, 2027.
