As reported last week, a six-minute preview for the finale of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, will be attached to IMAX screenings of Brad Bird's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. The situation seems like a win-win, as both films made extensive use of IMAX cameras during production, meaning that the best way to see each individual film will be on the biggest screen imaginable. There's one catch though: there are actually two kinds of IMAX theaters: the real kind, which have screens that can stand at about 80 feet tall; and fake IMAX (or LIEMAX), which has screens that are typically about 30 feet tall. It turns out that cinemas are being specific about where exactly the Dark Knight Rises footage will be shown.
AMC has learned that the six minute prologue for the new comic book movie will only be shown in authentic IMAX theaters showing the 70mm print of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. The official locations haven't been announced yet and there is no reason given for the move. Mission: Impossible will be arriving in IMAX theaters five days before its full release, hitting on December 16th and going wide on December 21st. To find the real IMAX theater closest to you (it may not be fully up-to-date), consult this handy Google Map.
Obviously this is going to seriously limit the number of people that will actually be able to see the footage (if you look at the map I linked to above, there are very few real IMAX theaters in the midwest), but in a way this is a good thing. The whole point of his promotion is to see the prologue in its best format, and that doesn't happen if the audience is going to screenings of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol in LIEMAX. Let's just hope that the footage is worth it for the folks that are traveling fifty miles to see it.
