IMAX 15/70 Film IMAX 15-perforation 70mm film format

What 15/70 is

The name is literal: 15 perforations per frame, 70mm film width. Standard 35mm film uses four perforations per frame and runs vertically through the projector. IMAX turns the film on its side so the frame runs along the length of the strip, and each frame spans 15 perforations. Wikipedia gives the frame size as 69.6 × 48.5 mm, against 48.5 × 22.1 mm for a Todd-AO 70mm frame. RedShark News and No Film School both describe the image area as nearly ten times that of a 35mm frame. The result fills the 1.43:1 screens covered in IMAX expanded aspect ratio.

Film is the format IMAX built its brand on. It is also the one IMAX's annual report describes as "sought-after" while listing only 52 locations at December 31, 2025, up from 44 a year earlier. The wider system is explained in IMAX.

How the format works

Cameras record on 65mm negative and the film is projected as 70mm, as Den of Geek summarizes it. Do not confuse this with the 5-perforation 65mm used on conventional large-format shoots. Oppenheimer used both: the IMAX sequences were 15-perf, and the non-IMAX parts were 5-perf 65mm. WHEC reports that Kodak made the film for The Odyssey's 35mm, 5-perf 70mm and IMAX 70mm versions.

The projector uses a rolling-loop mechanism. The film travels about 9 m (30 ft) up into a ceiling-mounted platter, runs through the gate, and returns to a take-up reel. Speed is about 103 m (337 ft) per minute, more than three times the 90 ft/min of standard 35mm. Wikipedia lists the film projector's xenon lamp at 15 kW with a life near 1,000 hours and a contrast ratio near 2,500:1. A 68-inch reel holds just under three hours of film and weighs about 272 kg (600 lb); an hour of film weighs about 136 kg (300 lb).

Run time and print length

Platters are the limit on film length. Wikipedia lists platters 1.2 to 1.83 m in diameter that hold 1 to 3 hours of film, and notes current platters can run up to 180 minutes. Avatar, at 2 hours 45 minutes, used close to 16 km of film. A print is heavy and the projector is a specialist machine: IMAX trained 60 new projectionists from scratch for The Odyssey, according to Dark Horizons.

Worked example: how much film is that

At about 103 m per minute the projector pulls 6,180 m of film through the gate every hour, or roughly 6.2 km. A feature of 2 hours 45 minutes (2.75 h) then needs about 17 km, which agrees with Wikipedia's figure of close to 16 km for Avatar. In imperial units, a just-under-three-hour print at 337 ft/min is about 60,000 ft of film, a little over 11 miles. RedShark's weight figures do not scale cleanly (300 lb per hour would suggest about 900 lb for nearly three hours, not 600 lb), and I could not reconcile them from the sources loaded. The frame area is also easy to check: 69.6 × 48.5 mm is about 3,376 mm², roughly three times the 1,072 mm² of a Todd-AO 70mm frame (48.5 × 22.1 mm).

How many 15/70 projectors remain

The honest answer has two numbers. IMAX's 10-K counts 52 film-system locations. The venue counts quoted for specific films are lower: Oppenheimer opened at 30 theaters worldwide (19 in the US, 6 in Canada, 3 in the UK, 1 in Australia, 1 in the Czech Republic), and The Odyssey, which opened July 17, 2026, was reported at 41 venues, 25 of them in the US, a net gain of 11 projectors. Dark Horizons says that took IMAX more than a year of finding and rebuilding decommissioned machines. The sources do not reconcile 52 against 41, so I will not guess which locations are the difference.

IMAX is not building more. Chief executive Richard Gelfond told Variety the company has not made new film projectors in about 50 years, and Dark Horizons reports that many parts no longer exist and the original design files are about half a century old. IMAX has built new cameras, though: the filing says it has deployed four of its all-new 65mm film cameras.

The Odyssey and Oppenheimer

The Odyssey is described as the first film shot entirely on IMAX film cameras, using more than two million feet of Kodak 65mm film. Its 70mm IMAX run was extended through the end of September 2026 and it is already reported as the highest-grossing IMAX release of all time. Oppenheimer was a hybrid, shot partly on IMAX film and partly on 5-perf 65mm, with a black-and-white IMAX stock created for the film. Dune: Part Three is slated for IMAX 70mm film, per IMAX's June 2026 release. For the home-theater angle on chasing these screens, see We Have IMAX at Home, and for the sibling formats see 65mm and 70mm film.

Common confusions

"Shot on 65mm" and "IMAX 70mm" are not synonyms. IMAX's filing notes its remastering can output to 15/70 film or to a digital package, so one title may exist in both. A film such as Dune: Part Two, shot on ARRI cameras, is digital in origin. The scale of a screening depends on the room, not only the film: Infinity Vision theaters, for example, are certified by Disney and may use laser, not film.