Museum of Science and Industry Meets the Music Video
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David Hennage, the museum’s vice president for administration and chief operating officer, says his statistics indicate that half the audiences who have seen the Stones film since it was released last fall have never been to an Imax theater. Sixty of the 80 existing Imax facilities around the world are currently housed in science museums.
Not surprisingly, the Museum of Science and Industry is treating At the Max more like a first-run feature film than an educational presentation. While Omnimax movies are usually scheduled for daytime hours, this one’s playing twice a night Thursday through Sunday while another picture, Ring of Fire (on cultures of the Pacific rim), will show during the theater’s daytime hours. At the Max’s steep admission price of $15 is about double the cost of a ticket to a first-run film in a movie theater and almost three times the Omnimax’s usual adult admission price of $5.50. Hennage insists the hefty charge is necessary if the film is to generate a profit. At eight performances a week at capacity, the announced three-month run will net the museum approximately $100,000, according to Hennage. Most of that profit will be plowed right back into the Imax theater to pay for a new digital sound system.
The Michael Leavitt and Fox Theatricals production of Theda Bara and the Frontier Rabbi throws in the towel at the Wellington Theater on May 24, having lost most of its $400,000 investment. Recent efforts to cut weekly running costs were not enough to counteract steadily falling ticket sales. Audiences seeing the show in its final weeks found no director credit listed on the program’s title page. Vivian Matalon, the director of record on opening night last February, asked that his name be removed when Leavitt and Fox stepped in after the show opened and demanded major structural changes.
