The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Product decision · 2017-2018
Marvel and IMAX debuted a TV show in theaters, and IMAX lost $11.1M on it
Inhumans premiered as a two-episode IMAX release to open its ABC run, drew just $1.1M its opening weekend, and was cancelled after one season.
Marvel Television · ABC · IMAX · 2017-09-01
What happened
Marvel Television and ABC partnered with IMAX to premiere the first two episodes of Inhumans in IMAX theaters before its regular television broadcast, an unprecedented format bet meant to generate buzz for a new corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and to give IMAX exclusive theatrical content.
Budget constraints during production led the show to depower or visually simplify several of its lead characters — including shaving off Medusa's signature prehensile hair, expensive to render digitally — undercutting the visual ambition the IMAX release format implied.
The IMAX theatrical run drew just $1.1 million in its opening weekend and $3.5 million total, well below expectations, and theater owners pulled the film quickly in favor of other releases. The subsequent ABC broadcast run averaged only 2.6 million viewers, and the series was cancelled after a single eight-episode season, with IMAX reporting an $11.1 million loss on the deal.
Why it happened
- The theatrical IMAX format promised big-screen spectacle that the show's constrained production budget couldn't actually deliver.
- Cost-cutting choices, like removing a lead character's signature visual effect, undercut the marketing the format bet depended on.
- IMAX committed to an unprecedented theatrical-television hybrid release without a comparable prior format to validate the approach.
- Neither ABC nor IMAX adjusted the plan even as reviews of the theatrical cut signaled the show wasn't ready to anchor a big-screen debut.
The lesson
A prestige distribution format is a bet on the content living up to it — cutting the content's budget doesn't cut what the format promised.
Aftermath
Inhumans became a cautionary reference for Marvel's television efforts and effectively ended the character group's presence in the MCU's screen plans, and no further Marvel projects attempted the theatrical-television hybrid release format afterward.
Sources
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