Global Head of Communications for IMAX Corporation, Mark Jafar, thank you so much for being here on behalf of everyone at IMAX for IMAX Investor Day 2025. We are very excited to welcome all of you, those of you who are in our offices here in Los Angeles, and everyone who's joined on the livestream all around the world, and we are very, very excited to share our strategy for building on this record-breaking year at IMAX, for driving long-term sustainable growth at the company, and for delivering strong returns for all of our shareholders, and we think we're just getting started, so let's get started today with today's agenda. First up, we'll have a conversation with our CEO, IMAX CEO, Rich Gelfond, to talk about our growth outlook and strategy for the company.
Next, our Chief Marketing Officer, Anne Globe, will join to share some brand new insights on our audiences and the IMAX global brand. Then our new Chief Content Officer, Jonathan Fisher, and our new Head of Global Distribution, Heather Morgan, will join to discuss our growing IMAX content portfolio worldwide. After that, we'll have a Q&A with our CEO of IMAX China, Daniel Manwaring, to provide insight on the vast evolving opportunity that we see in this big market for us. Then our Chief Commercial Officer, Giovanni Dolci, will join us to talk about our plan to grow the IMAX global network. And then we'll take a look at IMAX's end-to-end technology platform with IMAX Global President of Theaters, Mark Welton. And finally, our Chief Financial Officer, Natasha Fernandes, will walk you through our long-term financial plan, including 2026 guidance and our three-year financial targets.
Of course, we'll save plenty of time for questions for all of you at the end in the room here. For those of you who are here in person, the presentation will be followed immediately by a nice lunch on the patio, and then we'll have an exclusive advance screening of Avatar: Fire and Ash in glorious IMAX 3D a full two weeks before anyone else will see it in the world. One note for everyone watching at home, we will have a number of brief exclusive videos throughout the presentation that, unfortunately, we are not at liberty to share on the livestream. So we just ask you kindly to bear with us as those play no more than a few minutes each while they roll, and we'll be back shortly. For those of you in the room, please no photos or videos as those videos play out.
Thank you again for your time, your interest, and your investment in IMAX. And with that, let's roll our video, and then we'll talk to Rich.
IMAX lets the screen disappear. It lets you immerse yourself in whatever's in front of that camera. IMAX is able to give you the big, huge moments you want and really feeling like you're inside of it. This is cinema. This is the experience. It's showtime. It sounds and looks incredible. This is the most satisfying way to watch it. Who has a story about Odysseus? Think of what we can do together. We can do together.
All right. Rich, it's been a while since we've had an Investor Day at the company, I think since 2017, in fact. Why are we doing one now?
It's a matter of how we communicate our story. So the way we interact with most of you, rather than on a one-off basis, is through our quarterly earnings calls. And each quarter, we'll talk a little bit about what happened in that quarter and what's happening in the next quarter. But in fact, there's a much bigger picture of what's happening with IMAX. And we felt it was time to sit down with our investor group and really explain. And I think we think of it as a level reset, meaning that IMAX was this company that's been around for almost 60 years, and it's gone through a lot of phases. But I think we needed all as a group to kind of step back and say, what's happened over the last period of time, and more particularly, what's happened this year.
IMAX really is at a new level. When we designed the day today, we thought we would start with kind of this brief intro that I'm doing, and then we would have you meet the management team and the people who are implementing all of these initiatives. I think you'll come out of it feeling like you have a different understanding of IMAX, because it's very easy to say, what's the issue of the week and what's happening this quarter and what's this movie. The data throughout the entire company shows that we're in a very different place. It's kind of an auspicious day to start, because yesterday became the highest grossing year in the history of IMAX. We broke our record.
I promise you, it seems I don't believe in coincidences, but it must have been a sign that we scheduled this four months ago, and it's exactly that time. But when you go through kind of every piece of our business, whether it's films that are being shot with IMAX cameras, or whether it's film, it's digital cameras or film cameras, whether it's financial performance, whether it's new technology that we've come out with this year, whether it's you're noticing when you come through the Midtown Tunnel in New York and you drive down Hollywood Boulevard, that every sign says IMAX on it. And in fact, in many of the cases, IMAX is bigger than the title of the movie. Just so much has changed about our business in terms of the reset. And we think to know where we're going forward, you really have to understand that underlying change.
Our business, and to be really honest with you all, one of my most difficult tasks is getting our management team to even understand how much it's changed. So this last weekend for Thanksgiving, we put together an update and a forecast for our movies and what Zootopia was going to do and what Wicked was going to do. And some of the management team, Mark will tell you, that it drives you crazy, because I don't think our own team understands how much we're in a different place than where we were before. So for the last holiday weekend, we set a record by doing $41 million worldwide. And you say, okay, it's the movie business. Everybody makes up some kind of phony record every weekend. But this time, though, we beat our prior record by 70%.
So when you're in a business that's more or less linear, you beat your record by 3% or 5%. But in fact, we beat it by 70%. And I think when you see people take you through their businesses, you'll see that's not a one-off, whether it's signings, whether it's installs, whether it's backlog of theaters to be installed, whether it's backlog of movies coming in the next couple of years. Every aspect of our business has kind of moved to another level. And then I think you're all sitting there and saying, okay, what does the future hold for IMAX? So as this trend accelerates, IMAX becomes an incredibly valuable player, either as a wholly differentiated, publicly traded company or as part of a larger company with the keys to unlock even greater value in our strong business worldwide. And we're very excited about all of those possibilities.
We're going to run our business to maximize value in every possible way. We're uniquely able to leverage the shift to premium and consumer demand for great experiences and to become a springboard for other growth opportunities. The opportunity, The Odyssey, Narnia, and expanding the total market for IMAX systems now is the right time to talk about IMAX's future.
So you mentioned the story of the day earlier. I think the story of the week, the story of the month, potentially the story of the year that everyone is asking about is the potential sale of Warner Bros. Discovery. I'm curious what your thoughts are on the bidding process there, which seems to be heating up by the minute and how a potential sale could impact IMAX?
What is it for sale?
Yeah. I'll show you the article.
Hadn't heard about that, Mark. So it's been rumored in the press that there are three potential buyers for Warner Bros. And as you know, we have great relationships with Warner Bros. But fortunately, we also have terrific relationships with all the potential buyers. And I think we have some insights into how each of them might run the business differently. And I think we're not going to share those until it's clear that there's a winner. But I think the most important insight from our point of view is that whoever wins, we believe IMAX will win. And we've been through a lot the last seven years, whether it was a global pandemic or whether it was consolidation happening in the industry or whether it was acquisitions, like when Disney bought Fox.
Every time there's been alarm bells that have gone off, what does this mean for IMAX's future? Every one of those, we've actually built our business better. We built it stronger at 30-second diversion on the pandemic. I mean, while a lot of people thought about survival during the pandemic because of our asset -light model, we used that period of time to think about the next places we go. You are seeing the result of all that planning right now. To be a little bit more specific about it, we've had a relationship with David Ellison and with Paramount for two decades at least. We've done a lot of their biggest movies of both Paramount and David Ellison, because they only recently came together.
Whether it was Top Gun with Paramount, which we, by the way, with Paramount and David Ellison, or whether it was the Mission movies, Paramount has incredibly leaned into IMAX over the years. In our private discussions since the acquisition, they have assured us that they are leaning really hard into theatrical. Some people from Paramount were there last night who were actually pulling us aside and saying, you should hope we win, because we are going to go really all in to IMAX if that happens. I believe it. In addition, Anne Globe, who you will meet soon, our CMO, who I know for over two decades. Anne was the CMO of Skydance for six years before she joined IMAX. In addition to the corporate relationships, Anne, myself, and a lot of others have a lot of strong individual relationships.
If it's Comcast that's the winning bidder, we have a phenomenal relationship with Universal and Comcast. As you all remember, the Academy Award went to Oppenheimer, which was made not only with the Nolans, but with Universal, and you'll see a clip later at the Academy Awards. They shouted out IMAX as being essential to why that movie worked. We're doing The Odyssey with them this year. We're doing Wicked right now with them as we speak, but we have a much longer history, I'm sure, before many of you were involved with the company, but we did the Fast and Furious franchise. We've done Minions. We have very deep roots with them, and I'm very comfortable that if they were the winner in the Warner sweepstakes, that they understand the importance of IMAX very much.
And then the other one, Netflix, which has been more buzzed about in recent days. We have a really good relationship with Netflix. And we have a different view than a lot of exhibitors do. A lot of exhibitors put good guy and bad guy labels on different companies. But we've really gone out of our way to work with Netflix. And you'll hear a lot of talk today coming from us about Narnia. And Narnia is a movie being made by Greta Gerwig, which comes out next Thanksgiving. And it comes out exclusively in IMAX Theatres around the world for a month. And I want to repeat that, exclusively in IMAX Theatres. And there's a 28-day window. So if you want to see that movie anywhere in the world before it streams, you need to go to an IMAX theater.
And just to give you some context, for Oppenheimer, we did, I think, $170 million while it was playing in other places in the world. And the fact of this will be the first IMAX exclusive release. And the reason it happened was that it was Greta's idea. Greta really said, probably a year before we made the deal, that I'm making a movie that deserves to be shown in IMAX and needs to be shown in IMAX. And again, it took a fairly significant period of time. But we negotiated with everybody important at Netflix, including the CEO and Chief Content Officer, over a very detailed distribution plan, which includes theatrical marketing. It includes the way they're marketing the movie is see it in IMAX and see it in Netflix, see it both ways.
Yesterday, some of our investors with one of the analysts went over to Netflix for one of these bus tours, and they asked the Netflix people, "How do you feel about IMAX?", and what the Netflix management said is, "We love this model that we're doing on Narnia, and we'd like to do more of it." In fact, the proof is in the pudding. They've come to us to do other pictures like that during, actually, this year, but we felt strategically so good about Narnia. We want that to prove itself out before we move on to where we go with Netflix. Also, I believe, for what it's worth, that the regulatory authorities would not approve a deal with Netflix unless part of that deal was there'll be a theatrical release, and do I know that as a fact?
No, but I've been in my chair for almost 32 years. I not only know all the studios and the players and the exhibitors, but I know a fair amount about how windows and Netflix and theatrical interrelate, because we were in the middle of that during the pandemic. The other thing is that Warner Bros. has contracts that run through 2029 that guarantee a theatrical release. No matter who owns Warner Bros., those contracts have to be honored. One reason we did the Narnia deal is I've always felt that if you just have the same point of view and you sit in the same spot, your industry dies. I think even warring parties in this industry realize that there's got to be new models and new middle ground set.
I've thought all along that Narnia, and I know this is an overstatement, but it's really going to change the theatrical world, because I think exhibitors who said, never Netflix, once they see what this movie is going to do. I think Netflix, and I don't know if you've read the comments coming from Netflix, even from Ted, has said, IMAX is such a differentiated experience than the living room that we get the fact and we want to do more things that way. We also did Frankenstein this year in a limited release with Netflix. We have a number of projects on the drawing board. Whoever wins, I think IMAX is going to be a winner. I don't think it's obvious how this road is going to twist and turn. I feel quite confident that we're in a good place.
You mentioned transformation and managing change. And there's seemingly no greater sea change swimming through the industry than AI. But that's not something that you've kind of beat the drum about as many have. What's the company's approach there?
We recognize that AI is going to be a big part of everyone's future, and particularly in the entertainment industry. But we're not, except for a limited extent, and I'll get to in a minute, we're not creating AI tools. We're more users of AI than creators of AI, and I just felt it was inappropriate to jump on the bandwagon and to overpromise that, as many of the companies you guys probably invest in, we're the AI future. But if you back away from it, IMAX is a platform, and it's a global platform, and what we do is curate content, and the more content there is, we have a limited supply, so the thing that IMAX really sells and allocates is this beachfront property, this window to the world, curating in 90 countries in 1,800 theaters, so as there becomes more content, the big beneficiary is IMAX.
There's no question in my mind that more content is going to be coming out of AI. The costs are lower, special effects price comes down. We started a few years ago with six studios. Now, among the 200 pieces of content that we released this year, we deal with sports leagues. We deal with music companies. We deal with gaming companies. And adding on a whole supply of AI content is only going to be good for us. And you're all going to ask, does that mean you're going to change your take rates? Does that mean you're going to change your marketing? And the answer is, I don't know. We'll see how it plays itself out. But it's only good for us to have more content. And we have a little bit dipped our toe in the water, Mark.
So there's a thing called the AI Film Festival, where they give out awards for the best AI film. And IMAX, the winners' final round is actually in IMAX. And it has been for the last couple of years. So we work with those companies. And as a matter of fact, we have an event called the CEO Forum, where we talk about the future of entertainment with IMAX exhibition partners and some studios. And our AI panel this year had the head of AI at Lucasfilm. We had the head of AI at NVIDIA. We had people from USC Film School. We had studio people. So we very much see that as an opportunity. But we just don't know exactly where it is. And one thing we don't want to do is overpromise where we don't know where it's going.
On a smaller scale, we've been using versions of AI for a long time. So as you can see, `we uprez the movies. So if a film was shot in digital or 35 mm, and you put it on a big screen like this, it's just not going to look that good. And we have a process called DMR, which relies on some conventional tools, but it also relies to a certain extent on AI or AI-related tools. And that facilitates our business. We're using AI today in a lot of our marketing approaches, whether it's analyzing data or whether it's coming up with drafts of different creative materials, where we used to have to pay agencies to come up for three ideas. We're using AI to come up with 30 ideas.
You'll hear a lot about the fact that we monitor our content in real time in every theater around the world 24/7. We have a NOC Center, it's called, and AI will enable us to get more inputs, so what we've traditionally used it for is to set the sound in the theater. So if this theater was half empty, you would calibrate the speakers in a different way than if it was full, so this real-time center helps us calibrate that, but we get enormous amounts of data. It also tells us if the bulb is getting dull, so when you go to IMAX, you know that it's the optimal experience, and the filmmakers know it's the optimal experience, so we have all this data we weren't able to access, so we're working on internal projects like inventory management.
So how long from now is the bulb going to blow? Our systems now are a laser. When are the lasers going to burn out? How can we maximize light input into these things? So we very much see it as part of our future. But we just don't know exactly the path.
You mentioned IMAX beachfront property, right, and the scarcity of that. Certainly, there's other players in the industry who are looking at IMAX and saying, how do I get some of that for myself? So I'm wondering how you think about increased competition from PLFs.
Yeah, I'm looking at AI also. And I'm thinking of competing with NVIDIA, because there's a lot of money there. But you have to sort of have a basic culture and tools. So IMAX has 115 people doing R&D. The PLFs, I think if you added them all up, it's probably about five. And I think their R&D is mostly on the formula for butter for the popcorn, as well as how much electricity to bolster the bulbs that go in. We're just a completely different culture and a completely different enterprise. And our enterprise is based on the idea of quality and filmmaker-friendly. And that's what we exist to do. The PLFs make all of their money, or most of it, on selling popcorn. We don't sell popcorn. I personally don't like popcorn. Please don't quote me on that. It's not what we do as a company.
So for someone to say, we're going to compete with IMAX, and there's the brand, the biggest thing is it's an end-to-end solution. So we capture the images either with IMAX cameras, or we convert the images with IMAX proprietary algorithms into the input that goes into our system. Every other PLF, the first time they have seen the film is when it comes in the mail or it's streamed in. On The Odyssey with Chris Nolan, we've been working with him on that movie for a year and a half, two years, maybe more. We built a new generation of cameras through our engineering department, which you'll hear a lot more about from Mark Welton and others later in the presentation. And another example would be the F1 movie, when Apple and Joe Kosinski and Jerry Bruckheimer decided to make the movie.
About a year, maybe more a year and a half, we met with them. And they said, look, we don't really want to make the movie unless it's going to come out on IMAX. And they had had a very good experience, to say the least, with Top Gun. And they designed something like a dozen miniaturized IMAX cameras, which fit on each of the racing cars. And they're remotely controlled. So when you watch the film and it's turning corners, the cameras are turning. And there's lots of other aspects to it. So on the image capture side, we're very much involved. I mentioned to you that when the movie is in the theater, we're the only ones monitoring in real time. Is it the way Joe Kosinski wanted it to be seen? The marketing around it, I mentioned that briefly earlier.
When Anne comes up, she's going to show you some of the specialized design that the studio has put together for IMAX. And we have a marketing team that goes out there. And again, I think I'll stop abusing the PLFs. But their marketing team is busy marketing, whether it should be the big popcorn or the small popcorn or packaging popcorn. I mean, I know it sounds like I'm being a bit of an a-hole here. But it's just a different business. It doesn't do what we do. I think back to when I don't know how many of you know the history. But I was part of a group that bought IMAX in an LBO 32 years ago. And when we came to meet with the IMAX then management team, I asked a question. I said, IMAX's uptime is 99%. Suppose it was 98%.
How much more money could we answer? And could we make? And the answer was, we won't answer that question. Because our question is, how do we get it to 100? Now, I'm not suggesting we didn't change some of that philosophy, because we like making money better than the private ownership did. But it's in the paint. It's part of what this is. And if you just think about the idea of competing with us, I should mention one other really important thing. And that's the infrastructure of theaters. We're in the best street corners in 90 countries. So whether it's the 68th Street in New York or the London Science Museum or the best location in Tokyo, the cost of those buildings is close to $10 billion. And those locations don't exist.
When I read in the paper, the scoop in Bloomberg, that a startup is going to compete with IMAX, frankly, we're always on our game. It's just not a credible threat. I think we've been in business almost 60 years. I just don't think you build something like this overnight. I hope you come out of this presentation understanding more of the complexity and details that make IMAX what it is.
Switching gears, local language filmmaking and international filmmaking have been an increasing contributor box office over the last several years. How is that reshaping the global box office and IMAX's business?
So the inspiration for local language films came during the pandemic. Because what happened was Hollywood was pretty much shut down, as you know. But our company is so diversified. And I think someone will go through a slide. Around 40% of our box office is domestic. But the rest is from around the world. So in all but the first year or the first few months of the pandemic, IMAX was cash flow positive and didn't burn through cash. And it was that diversification which really helped us. So we weren't spending a lot of time on new Hollywood movies. And we didn't lay people off. We kind of kept people on special projects. And one of them was really how to diversify globally and how to get more local language content. And we spent a lot of time and a lot of effort.
It wasn't visible at that time. It was very much a strategic goal for us. In 2019, we had like three local language films in India. I think this year we have like 20 or 25. Our box office this year, about 35%-40%, has been local language films. Local language has two components. It's an Indonesian film in India. It's an Indonesian film in Indonesia also. It's a French film in France. It's a French film in Belgium. One of our recent great successes has been anime. Most of you know about Demon Slayer, where we've done almost $100 million. Most of that is in different countries. Like our most successful Japanese opening ever in China was Demon Slayer, where it had a huge weekend. It's not just the local territory.
But it also boosts our international footprint. And Gio, who will talk about global sales, is going to talk about how that's also helped our expansion efforts. Because if you're in Korea, you don't only want to see Hollywood films. You want to see Korean films. So the more content we have available there, it really helps boost our theater network. And then some of this was luck. Some of it was prescience. But the studios were so focused on streaming and getting a Netflix multiple that they missed the fact that pre-pandemic, they had 80% market share in the world. And now in 2024, they had 60% market share in the world. And that's because local language was creating content that was resonating in those markets. And I think there are only two companies that really saw that and capitalized on that. And one is Netflix.
You know local language has been a big part of their momentum. The other one's IMAX. I bet a lot of you don't know what a big part of our box office that is. We're going to continue to lean into local language. It's continued to be a more important part of our company.
So a lot of new, newish faces on the IMAX senior management team. Tell us a little bit about who we're going to hear from today.
OK. So you sort of told them at the beginning. So I'll go a little bit briefly through it. But after my presentation is Anne Globe. As I said, not only does Anne have a lot of experience with studios, but amazing amounts of relationships. It always amazes me how many people in a restaurant come up to Anne. And we have a very longstanding relationship. It's been helpful. And her team gets a lot of credit for the marketing changes. Then we're going to go into our content side of the business. And we recently hired Jonathan Fisher. And in the world of coincidence, which, as I said, I don't believe in it. But it was. Jonathan started when I had just started the negotiations with Greta and with Netflix. And Jonathan was a senior executive at Netflix for five years.
He's proven to be extremely helpful as we navigate this changing world. Reporting to Jonathan is Heather Morgan. It's also a little bit of an unusual hire. We had hired people who had experience in Hollywood. Heather had a lot of experience in exhibition. So she worked for AMC on the programming side. She worked for Harkins. She worked for, forgetting the other one.
Alamo.
Alamo Drafthouse. And she helped program it. And I think you guys know that when you're in the IMAX business, we program the screens. So AMC, Regal, Wanda, they don't program it. We program it. So we had the thought, why don't we get someone who knows a lot about programming to help figure out the slate for us and put it together. And besides Heather reporting to Jonathan, there is a lot of the alternative content, the foreign language content. He becomes the air traffic controller for the 200 pieces of content that are put on the screen. Then after Jonathan, Daniel Manwaring, who is our CEO of IMAX China. Daniel ran parts of CAA in China for more than a decade. He also has a financial background. And he has unbelievable relationships in the Chinese film community.
We thought that would be especially interesting to you all, because you don't get FaceTime with Daniel frequently. After Daniel, Gio Dolci. Gio has been at IMAX for 13 years. He spends more time on a plane than any pilot I know. Literally, the guy lives around the world. He has lots of relationships with the exhibitors. I know we talk a lot about our relationships with the filmmakers and the studios. Like the CEO Forum, which I mentioned, we have just fantastic relationships on a global basis. Gio manages those. He'll talk to you about what our growth prospects are there. Mark Welton, who oversees, he has a fancy title like president of.
Global President of IMAX.
Theaters. Global President. As you know, everyone in Hollywood is a president of something. But Mark, along with a video we put together, will tell you about our technology and the role that our technology plays in the whole IMAX experience. And then finally, the wrap-up will be somebody you won't be interested in listening to at all, which will be Natasha, who will give you guidance and numbers and things none of you are interested in. So I suspect you'll all be interested in that.
So one last question, Narnia. As you mentioned, a year from now, it'll be playing exclusively in IMAX Theatres around the world. How are you feeling about how that project's coming together?
So this is one where you could see I'm pretty passionate about the IMAX business. But this is one that my team has to hold me back. Because I think, as I said before, that it's really going to change the world. And I know that sounds like a lot of hyperbole. But Greta is making this movie for IMAX. And then fully understands that when word gets out of what this movie is, it's going to create a cultural event. So for us, the goal is not only to do good box office in IMAX, but to prove out that IMAX can create worldwide events where they didn't exist before. So we want Netflix to do well on streaming. That's part of our goals in this. And again, when we negotiated with Netflix, we were in a very unique position. Because the exhibitors have a history.
And the exhibitors also have an animosity at some level, because they see themselves as competitors. But we don't compete with Netflix. I mean, does anyone here have a television set that looks like this screen? And I think we recognized it. So we had a very productive negotiating session. We said, we're not doing it unless there's a theatrical marketing budget. So there is. And we're not doing it unless there's a blockbuster budget for this movie. And trust me, there's a very blockbuster budget for this movie. And the premieres have to be in IMAX. And Greta has to go on talk shows and talk it up. This is a real blockbuster movie that's being made for both. And then I guess I do have to talk a little about why I'm so excited about it. This is not your mother's or your grandmother's Narnia.
The music in it is unbelievably contemporary music, which IMAX fans like, and I'm not going to say specifically, but things like Pink Floyd and The Doors and that kind of music, which people go to see in IMAX. The movie itself is going to be, it's being filmed at the largest soundstage in Europe. I went on the set where there were hundreds of people and multiple green screens, and it's filmed at multiple locations. You're going to see a clip in a second, and if you can't see how passionate Greta is about it, then you'll have to wait to see the movie to see how awesome it is. When I look at the most important movies coming out for us in 2026, for me, it starts with Avatar in January, then The Odyssey, and a lot of people will be talking about that.
But the cast of The Odyssey looks like the awards section of the Academy Awards. The budget behind that movie, the marketing campaign. Most of you probably know that we put tickets on sale a year in advance. And of the ones we put on sale, we sold out. Mandalorian, Star Wars. Jon Favreau invented special technology to film that movie for IMAX. Dune Part 3. Denis Villeneuve is filming a good part of the movie with IMAX film cameras. I left one out. How could I leave one out?
Mandalorian, Dune.
Mandalorian, Dune. And then the movies which have amazing buzz already are things like Hail Mary and like Michael, the Michael Jackson story. But of all of that, including those movies, the one I'm most excited about is Narnia. Because I think of its potential to change IMAX and to change the business.
Great. Well, thank you, Rich. Let's take a look at that clip.
Get up. I don't know if I could. If you know reality is never as good as it should be. It's always the same. If you've got money in your pocket, I could go for some change. If you've got money in your pocket, I could go for some change. If you've got money in your pocket, maybe. Because all I got is conversations with strangers all over the radio. I'm falling off with somebody back in the backseat. I think I should talk about it, but I forgot what I called. Get up tonight, knock out everything and sleep until somebody calls. Got a hell of a party between you and me. I want to be more than I want to be. I don't want to be me.
I saw your face in a big crowd, and now it's all I think about. I guess I'm weak, but nothing's wrong. A puzzle I can't figure out. I'm running, running circles and I don't ever pass. I'm caught in a sad circle with an implausible past. Look into my past and I'll check in the news. I'm trying everything I can to get back to you. I'm coming through, I'm coming through, I'm coming through, I'm coming through. I'm impersonal. I'm coming through, I'm coming through, I'm coming through, I'm coming through, I'm coming through. I'm impersonal. I'm impersonal. I'm impersonal. I'm losing sleep because I'm obsessed. Feels like this case could be my death. I need a hint. I need a clue.
Whoo. OK. I'm Anne. I'm going to balance the scales a little bit by saying that I love popcorn, just in case anybody is curious. I've been at IMAX for almost two years. As Rich mentioned just before that, I ran marketing at Skydance Media and at DreamWorks. I know some of you from the DreamWorks days. I'm pleased to talk to you today about all the great momentum we have had recently with our filmmaker and studio partners. Hopefully, you've seen a lot of stuff in the marketing, in the community. And of course, it all starts with our fans. IMAX has become a cornerstone of event film campaigns, signifying a can't-miss theatrical experience, as you can see here in this great Times Square billboard for the recent blockbuster Wicked: For Good, a real favorite this holiday season.
And this Wild and Wacky, Zootopia 2, Sonic 3, both films contributing to our record-setting Thanksgiving results this past weekend. IMAX has been spotted everywhere, like in the subway, where this summer you may have seen this giant Mission: Impossible signage. Or many of you have been traveling from New York. If you've been through JFK, you may have seen this Tron takeover. And at tentpole premieres of some of the year's most notable films, where IMAX is front and center as our studio partners encourage audiences to see their films in the best way possible. In some cases, the IMAX brand is the most notable cinematic message. We're always working very closely with our studio partners to build these groundbreaking campaigns and create custom elements like this signage for the most anticipated film of the year, Avatar.
Now I'd like to share with you an upcoming TV spot that features IMAX.
Fire is the only pure thing in this world. There is something you're hiding. This world goes much deeper than you imagine. Burn them all. If your father and I do not return, then you go as far and as fast as you can. What is that always say? He's never quit. That's right. So he's never quit. The day is come. Avatar, Fire and Ash, rated PG-13. Get tickets now.
I'm going to keep talking. We recently commissioned a new study with NRG to bring you the most up-to-date brand and audience data, and it shows, amazingly, that 76% of moviegoers are more likely to see a film in a theater if they know it's an IMAX release. Plus, this is a great one. IMAX continues to add value to the lifecycle of these films, with 70% of moviegoers saying they're more likely to watch a film when it comes to a streaming platform if they know it was released in IMAX. The study shows that IMAX brand awareness is on par with top well-known entertainment brands like Spotify, HBO Max, ESPN, and Pixar, but with even stronger fan engagement. Our fans are really passionate and recommend IMAX with the same level of advocacy as top tech streaming and global consumer brands like Nike.
IMAX is known for building community at the scale of the most coveted brands in entertainment, including high-quality content creators like A24, Marvel, DC, Pixar, and even the game giant Nintendo. Most importantly, our brand strength has helped power the increase in our global market share. As Rich mentioned, our 2025 GBO is now at a record high of 3.8%, up 23% over last year alone. We're also up 16% domestically, capturing 5.2% of the box office, all on less than 1% of screens. All in all, we're very capital efficient at IMAX, getting great value from these big studio campaigns and focusing our resources on selling tickets, which benefits all of our partners in the ecosystem. The results are clear, with a record number of five films this year opening in the U.S. with more than 20% indexing, all due to audience momentum.
Not only do we excel with fanboys, as you might expect, but the IMAX audience is really everyone. We have significant momentum with males and females alike of all ages. We're seeing our strongest growth among teens, 13 to 17-year-olds, ensuring our audience base will continue to grow into the future. This teen and young adult audience contributed greatly to our 19% average indexing on recent anime hits like Chainsaw Man and Demon Slayer. Plus, we're also over-indexing in the growing horror category, with an average of 14% of opening weekends for this year's top hits, Sinners, Final Destination, Weapons, and The Conjuring. I can wholeheartedly recommend all those films. Our total IMAX fan community is also growing with over 11 million followers on a worldwide basis, up about 20% in 2025. Hopefully, you're already following us on your favorite social channel. And if you're not, please join up.
We've got a lot of great stuff planned for 2026. Of course, posts with top talent are always really popular, like this surprise appearance from Brad Pitt. Sadly, we could not get Brad Pitt here today. But interestingly, two of our top 10 posts this year came from our growing anime fan base with the global Japanese blockbuster Demon Slayer, resulting in almost 8 million views and 400,000 engagements. Our fans also love everything that is unique to IMAX, like this behind-the-scenes look at our film reels and projection process for the huge hit Sinners. We had over 6 million views. Plus, nothing compares to Chris Nolan to spark a wave of fan excitement at any time, like even on his birthday, when we posted this happy birthday post and it generated 4 million views.
We're now offering cool new merchandise and apparel by recently expanding our consumer products line with seasonal branded merchandise drops. So you can get a jump on that holiday shopping at imax.com. And overall, our box office has really been driven by a loyal, passionate fan base, which sets the stage for us to transcend the ordinary in 2026. So now I'm very excited to end the session with that little preview they gave you. And I think hopefully you all got these 3D glasses. So you'll put these on. You're going to be the first people ever to see this new piece that we are going to debut later this month with Avatar. Hopefully, you're familiar with our countdown that you saw when we kicked off the presentation today. You're the first audience to see this special exclusive IMAX countdown. So let's see if it's actually going to play. Let's go.
It's hard not to get excited when you see the most successful filmmakers in the world affirming what we know to be true. IMAX is a global platform that offers the best canvas for creators and the most immersive experience for fans. We've invested significantly in proprietary technology and partnerships throughout the industry. In over six decades, we've built huge brand equity. Our unique, highly advantageous business model ensures that we are positioned to continue growing, whether that be with the biggest Hollywood blockbusters, or Chinese films that break $2 billion in box office, or local language and alternative content titles that supersede our global footprint and passionate fan bases. We take home an average of 18% of every IMAX ticket sold, and content owners and exhibitors know we're worth it.
I've spent my career at the intersection of content strategy, data analytics, and finance at leading companies, including Netflix, Illumination, Universal Pictures, and the Walt Disney Company. In my role as the Chief Content Officer, I strategically manage a content portfolio that has more than doubled over the last five years to ensure we are strengthening the ecosystem we've built among our creative partners, our IP holders, exhibitors, and of course, our fans. Today, we want to talk to you about our path for continuing to grow our business and deliver stronger results year after year. We are focused on further strengthening our indexing, growing our local language business, increasing the flexibility in our slate, and using old content to augment box office and increase brand affinity. We have been increasing how we leverage data and analytics with strong results.
We have a huge opportunity to use AI to further improve our capacity utilization to meaningfully increase our box office and revenue. Partnering with me is our new head of global distribution, Heather Morgan.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Hello. As Rich mentioned, I've spent my career in theatrical exhibition, creatively programming content and designing experiences that drive audiences to the big screen. Today, I'm absolutely thrilled to have had the opportunity to leverage this expertise on a global scale, partnering with our incredible leadership team to shape the future of IMAX while continuing its legacy. The position that we hold today at the very center of the film ecosystem has been decades in the making. Jim Cameron worked shoulder to shoulder with IMAX, testing and perfecting how to shoot in 3D for the original Avatar. Michael Jackson moonwalked across our office while working on his 2009 concert documentary, This Is It. The history of IMAX could fill volumes, but our story is just getting started. And now we're investing in future generations of filmmakers, working closely with Ryan Coogler, Michael B.
Jordan, Zach Cregger, Greta Gerwig, and many others to write the next chapter. Working with brilliant creatives both within and outside of IMAX, we curate content for our platform to reach more than 80 million fans through over 250 exhibition partners on 1,800 screens worldwide and counting. Today, Jonathan and I are excited to share IMAX's strategy to offer a unique, diversified global content portfolio that mobilizes audiences and builds affinity for the IMAX brand. Now, that affinity may begin with our filmmaking partners, but the studios and IP holders that supply our content are critical to our success. We have vastly expanded and deepened those relationships over the past five years. Several years ago, we relied primarily on a small number of Hollywood studios to source our content.
While Hollywood remains the strong core of our business, driving roughly 65% of our global box office, we've dramatically expanded our roster of partners to meet the evolving tastes of audiences around the world. We now actively partner with more than 60 content owners worldwide. They represent streaming platforms, studios of every size, music labels, major league sports teams, video game developers, and more. Audiences today are resounding in their feedback. They want optimal experiences, and they want maximum variety. IMAX gives them both. From Hollywood tentpoles like Avatar and breakout hits like Sinners to local language juggernauts like Ne Zha 2 and iconic concerts like The Grateful Dead to inspiring documentaries like The Blue Angels, we have increased the number of films and events that we program, reaching nearly 125 new pieces of content this year. That isn't everything we play. It's new pieces of content only.
If you include every single event that's played on our screens this year, it totals over 260. All of these events coalesce and put us on track to deliver more than $1.2 billion in global box office. As Rich mentioned, this week, we broke our company record for the highest global box office achieved in a single year, unseating 2019 with $1.13 billion, and as Anne shared, our market share is at a record high. This momentum will continue. Next year's slate looks incredibly strong, anchored by five massive tentpole titles that are all deeply IMAX-centric. Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third installment to our two highest-grossing films of all time, will lead our start into the new year. As Mark mentioned, this afternoon, before audiences anywhere, we offer you the opportunity to watch this cinematic masterpiece the very best way possible right here in IMAX.
In May, we'll bring you The Mandalorian and Grogu. In close collaboration with director Jon Favreau, we did indeed build a custom version of our Apple Vision Pro app so that he could frame and optimize shots specifically for IMAX while on set in real time. In July, of course, we're going to begin The Odyssey with Christopher Nolan, the first narrative film shot entirely with IMAX film cameras. And as Rich mentioned, in July, exactly one year from the release of the film, we put tickets for The Odyssey on sale in 26 of our 70 mm film locations, and nearly all of them sold out within an hour. His last feature, Oppenheimer, grossed more than $185 million in IMAX box office, representing a staggering 22% of the film's total gross. We believe that the sky is truly the limit for The Odyssey.
Next Thanksgiving, as you've heard, we'll bring you Narnia from Greta Gerwig, an IMAX-exclusive event that has all the makings of the global cultural phenomenon that she created with Barbie, and rounding out the year, we'll have Dune Part 3, the first in Denis Villeneuve's saga that is captured with IMAX film cameras. There was such demand for its predecessor, Dune Part 2, that some IMAX locations were showing it literally around the clock, and the anticipation for this next film is even higher. There is far more than that in store for next year. If you were in an IMAX auditorium over Thanksgiving just as I was, then you saw the same thing I did: excited kids, teens, and moms packing the house to watch Zootopia and Wicked, along with all the dads who were pretending like they didn't want to be there.
Those two films delivered a, you're laughing, you know it's true. Those two films delivered a combined $40 million in IMAX box office, becoming the highest-grossing Thanksgiving weekend in IMAX history, exceeding last year's record, as Rich said, by 70%, proving that families, not just fanboys, want to see their favorite franchises in IMAX. For them, we have multi-billion-dollar franchises, Super Mario, Toy Story, and Minions, all returning to IMAX in 2026. And with video games looking like the next big IP driver of blockbuster movies, we'll have Mortal Kombat II, Street Fighter, and Resident Evil. There is much more on next year's slate than I could possibly cover today, but I would like to end with something special: the King of Pop's heart-something biopic, Michael, with his nephew, Jaafar Jackson, in the starring role.
I could try to describe to you how epic this film is going to be, but there is literally no way that I would do it justice. So instead, I would very much like to show you. You are the first audience anywhere in the world to see this exclusive clip of Michael.
So maybe I pretend it. Oh, I wish it never ended. I held on with all my might, still waiting on the last goodbye. Last goodbye. Last goodbye. Last goodbye. And as far as I, at least how I remember, we were leaving in September when red and gold paint the sky. And as far as I, though maybe I pretend it. Oh, I wish it never ended. I held on with all my might, still waiting on the last goodbye. All of my friends are getting wasted, and I can't help but smile.
I watch them talking to my parents. Oh, how time just flies by. I was a kid three years ago. Now I'm a woman in the making. All of my friends are going places, starting families of their own. They're bringing flowers, baby. Am I the last to know? This ain't a celebration. Is it my funeral? All of my friends are getting tired of me canceling on plans, but I am fighting my anxiety. I don't stand a chance. I haven't laughed like this in years. Must be too good to be true, then. Maybe I don't want to live, but I don't want to die yet. They're bringing flowers, baby. Am I the last to know? This ain't a celebration. Is it m y funeral?
Whew. Was that thrilling? That's good. It's so good. All right. As you can see, the Hollywood lineup for 2026 does indeed look amazing, but we are not stopping there. In the clearest sign of demand for our platform, our 2027 slate is already over 50% booked. Truly an unprecedented milestone for this company. The emerging quality of that slate is outstanding. To give you just a small taste, we'll have Miami Vice from our phenomenal partner, Joe Kosinski, who pushed the envelope of IMAX technology with both Top Gun: Maverick and F1. We'll have Star Wars: Starfighter starring Ryan Gosling. Our team visited the set, and the film is poised to recapture the imaginative, tactile, swashbuckling spirit of the original trilogy. We'll have The Legend of Zelda, a long-awaited live-action adaptation of the iconic video game series full of lush worlds, heroic scale, and a mythic story that fans have been living inside for decades.
And of course, two wildly anticipated saga conclusions: Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse and Avengers: Secret Wars. Once again, leveraging the immense demand for our platform to create unprecedented long-term visibility into our slate, we have actually already begun locking in select titles for 2028. To name just one for today, from director Sam Mendes, we'll have The Beatles, four interconnected theatrical biopics, each telling the captivating story of the band that created Beatlemania from the perspectives of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Now, you may be thinking that this sounds like a lot of film, and you would be correct. With just one IMAX screen per theater complex and only 52 weeks in the year, there are far more studios and filmmakers who want their films to be released in IMAX than we could ever accommodate.
To maximize our utilization, we are implementing a dynamic programming strategy where multiple Hollywood titles and events play together on screen, such as Wicked: For Good and Zootopia are doing currently. This is a notable departure from the way we operated just a few years ago and is just one of the many avenues through which we are proactively maximizing the value of our platform. Another avenue is our Filmed for IMAX program, in which films are shot with IMAX cameras and are specifically created to be seen in our format. This means that we, the filmmakers, and the studios are all telling consumers that the very best way to experience these films is in IMAX. As you heard in the video, Ryan Coogler said, "These films have an expanded aspect ratio. This is exclusive to IMAX," which means it isn't just the same image made larger.
Moviegoers are actually seeing more picture in the frame, images they wouldn't see in any other format. And when this happens, it drives meaningful results. When a title is filmed for IMAX, we see 28% higher IMAX indexing. In 2025, four filmed-for-IMAX titles opened over $30 million with 20% indexing, which were Sinners, Mission: Impossible, F1, and Tron: Ares. This year, our 10 Hollywood Filmed for IMAX titles generated $442 million, or about 35% of our IMAX global box office. And every single one of those landed in the top 20 highest-grossing films of the year. Our positioning of these films drives greater interest, greater conversion, and greater box office. IMAX doesn't just choose tentpole titles. We create tentpole titles. In just three short years since we've launched the Filmed for IMAX program, it has become arguably the most sought-after and influential seal of quality that this industry has to offer.
We have 12 Filmed for IMAX Hollywood titles slated for 2026 and nine already identified for 2027. And while we can't tell you absolutely everything that's going to be playing on our screens in the years to come, I can tell you that it extends far beyond the boundaries of Hollywood.
Yeah. We continue to open our aperture, expanding into new, awe-inspiring experiences across the creative spectrum. While space is limited and content options are abundant, we believe there is room for more seats at the IMAX table, specifically in the form of expanding partnerships with the industry's leading streaming companies. We've positioned ourselves as a preferred partner for streamers, as a premium out-of-home experience that is differentiated and that announces a film as truly cinematic. This year, we partnered with Apple to bring Joe Kosinski's octane-fueled F1 into our theaters, propelling the film to over $600 million worldwide.
IMAX alone generated over 15% of that box office. This past October, we partnered with Netflix to bring Guillermo del Toro's cinematic Frankenstein to select IMAX locations around the globe, and we hosted multiple live events with Guillermo and star Oscar Isaac in our theaters. And of course, in November, we are bringing visionary filmmaker Greta Gerwig's bold reimagining of the world of Narnia exclusively to IMAX screens around the globe as a Filmed for IMAX title. Within the first month of me joining IMAX, as Rich has mentioned, I had the privilege to work on structuring the Narnia deal with Greta and our partners at Netflix. It was a fortuitous opportunity given my background, and I'm still not sure if this was the primary reason that Rich hired me.
But be that as it may, this was an exciting proof point right off the bat for me that IMAX is an essential part of the movie ecosystem and we're positioned to execute groundbreaking deals that no one else can deliver. We have one of the most singular creative voices and commercial forces in film making a truly epic blockbuster film that will only be available on IMAX for fans around the world. Ted Sarandos was asked why Netflix had partnered with IMAX on Narnia and if this was a change to the Netflix approach to traditional theatrical windows. Ted's response was the following: "I doubt anyone has a screen as big as an IMAX screen at home. It is a differentiated consumer experience." We couldn't agree more with him. Over the next two years, we already have four films from Amazon MGM Studios confirmed on our slate.
We begin the year with Mercy starring Chris Pratt, followed by Project Hail Mary, the film adaptation of The New York Times' number one bestselling novel starring Ryan Gosling, and in 2027, we have The Thomas Crown Affair directed by and starring Michael B. Jordan. Streaming and technology companies see strong brand alignment with IMAX as we are a premium, tech-driven offering focused on pushing traditional content boundaries, and we reach a worldwide audience in ways that no other company can do. Local language content is something we are uniquely positioned for, given our footprint of 1,800 locations in 90 territories. With this global footprint, we serve an international fan base, and our local language initiative delivers on four key pillars. First, it delivers more of what fans are looking for, as we're seeing in the increased results in home territories.
Second, in certain circumstances, these titles can become global hits, as we've seen with Demon Slayer, Chainsaw Man, j-Hope: HOPE ON THE STREET , and even the release of the classic Studio Ghibli title, Princess Mononoke. Third, local language titles improve our scheduling flexibility and can help us sustain our results even during periods where Hollywood titles aren't at their strongest. And last, but definitely not least, local language titles are particularly valuable to our exhibition partners, and our commitment to growing this vertical continues to provide invaluable support to our sales team in expanding the footprint. We are on track to deliver a staggering $400 million in global local language box office, representing 37% of our total performance. To put that in context, in 2019, we delivered just $131 million from local language titles.
By the end of this year, we will have distributed approximately 68 local language titles originating from 15 different territories, and we will continue to grow the volume and footprint in 2026 and beyond. This year, in South Korea, 40% of our IMAX box office has come from local language titles. In Japan, that number is 67%, and in China, it's 74%. Audiences want to see more of their local films in IMAX. All right. Now is the part of my presentation where I get to throw just a bunch of data and stats at you, so strap in, please. We really could do this all day, so I'm just going to highlight a few extraordinary performance metrics which illustrate the value of local language titles. 2025 box office champ Ne Zha 2 delivered a staggering $167 million in IMAX box office.
In response to fan demand, we played the film in 27 markets worldwide, including two runs in North America. Last month, Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle opened in China, delivering the highest IMAX opening weekend box office, attendance, and indexing ever for a Japanese title in that market. At $95 million, it is now IMAX's second highest-grossing local language release of all time, behind Ne Zha 2. It isn't just new releases that fans want to see. They also want to see their favorite classic films presented with a never-before-seen level of quality and scale. We recently finished a phased global release of Studio Ghibli's 1997 classic, Princess Mononoke, which generated over $15 million in IMAX box office. Prior to Demon Slayer, Princess Mononoke earned our biggest opening weekend for a local language title ever in the United States on a film that's nearly 30 years old.
But we aren't just standing pat and doing what we've always been doing. We are looking to innovate and expand our commitment and our moat in local language content. Today, we're excited to announce a long-term deal between IMAX and GKIDS to extend our partnership on Studio Ghibli titles. Beginning in 2026, we will be releasing multiple titles from Studio Ghibli, with more details to come. The future of anime has never looked stronger, and IMAX is strategically positioned to be an integral part of it. In addition, content exclusivity is a key component of our local language strategy. We are leveraging our strength to secure exclusive windows and ensure we are the first place where fans can view their favorite films and events. Last month, we exclusively debuted the domestic release of K-pop sensation j-Hope's concert film, Hope on the Stage.
Last night, in partnership with GKIDS, we exclusively debuted Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution omnibus in the U.S. This Monday, in partnership with Neon, we will be the first and only screens showing the North American release of No Other Choice. We're also further expanding films for IMAX into local language filmmaking. Releasing in time for Diwali 2026, Indian cinema mogul Namit Malhotra brings Ramayana Part One, an adaptation of India's iconic epic and the most anticipated Indian film next year. The momentum continues as Oscar-winning director S.S. Rajamouli, India's most commercially successful filmmaker and the director of RRR, unveils his next film, Varanasi, followed by Ramayana Part Two during Diwali 2027. Both will be filmed for IMAX. And in Japan, we are expanding our partnership with Toho on the first Filmed for IMAX Japanese title, and we will be excited to bring you more details on that title very soon.
Year-round, we provide fans unforgettable experiences beyond theatrical features, ranging from music and concert films, sporting events, gaming tournaments, and re-releases of iconic films often never before seen in IMAX. Alternative content drives not only incremental box office revenue but brand affinity among audiences beyond regular moviegoers. Just this year, we've released titles from The Grateful Dead, Prince, Depeche Mode, and Pink Floyd, to name a few. And as we mentioned earlier, these events also drive increased capacity utilization and efficiently fill gaps in the Hollywood slate. Our team jokingly dubbed last August, "Alt Content August," but it's no joke that music and re-releases carried us to year-over-year domestic box office for the month that was 117% better than the exhibition industry as a whole. By year-end, our alternative content events will have generated over $30 million in incremental box office, an immeasurable return in fan engagement.
We are doubling down on these efforts, projecting nearly 20% growth in the box office that these events will deliver next year. Music, in particular, has delivered great results for us with titles like Becoming Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii. Becoming Led Zeppelin was released exclusively for a week in IMAX and was the number seven film in the domestic box office on its opening weekend. Pink Floyd was the number six title, where IMAX contributed 82% of its opening box office on a weekend where we were playing the incredibly successful Sinners for most of our shows. It is now very possible to release a film to great results exclusively in IMAX and then to use that IMAX release to launch additional value throughout the rest of the life cycle, and we're not just telling ourselves this; the industry sees it as well.
We are excited to announce that in February, just as we did with Becoming Led Zeppelin, we are partnering with legendary filmmaker Baz Luhrmann and Neon and Universal Pictures for a one-week exclusive IMAX run of EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert. I saw this film, and it had me singing and dancing in my seat, which I promise you, you're glad you weren't there to see that. But given how great the film is in IMAX, we do want to share this trailer of what The King will be bringing to all of you and all of our fans in February. I can't wait to see it again. We've delivered over half of our top 20 highest-grossing music events in just the past two years. And speaking of music exclusivity, we are continuing our partnership with Universal Music Group's Mercury Studios.
We've already successfully collaborated with Mercury on Queen Rock Montreal and Prince's Sign o' the Times , both exclusively in IMAX. Next week, we're re-releasing Stones at the Max, the groundbreaking 1991 concert film shot with IMAX cameras that many have called the greatest concert film ever made. In February, we'll have Eric Church's Evangeline vs. the Machine: Comes Alive, the concert film for his Grammy-nominated album, again exclusively in IMAX. While some artists work the stage, others create on the court. I'm very excited to announce our next original documentary project, Stephen Curry: Portrait of an Artist, directed by acclaimed filmmaker Gotham Chopra in a collaboration with the NBA, Tom Brady's Religion of Sports, and Stephen Curry's Unanimous Media.
We are currently in the market with this project and expect to announce a distribution and streaming partner by early next year under the advantageous multi-window model we established with The Blue Angels. What should be clear by now is that IMAX is in a different position than we have ever been before. With our best-in-class end-to-end technology, our deep filmmaker and studio relationships, and our global footprint, we offer something no one else can. And with these differentiators, we are able to set our own destiny and optimize our slate in ways that would have been impossible just a few years ago. We are redefining what success looks like in our industry.
Around this time last year, we shared our expectation for our 2025 box office to hit $1.2 billion, what would be a record performance for us in a year that was not expected to set records at the overall box office. Now, I remember meeting with a senior executive at one of the major studios, someone I've known for over 15 years, and he mentioned this figure to me. He rolled his eyes and told me that he didn't really know what we could be basing that on, but good luck to us, well, we're happy to share that we are well on track to exceed $1.2 billion of box office. This week, on December 2nd, we already exceeded our previous best year ever, with nearly a full month to go and Avatar: Fire and Ash still to be released.
We definitely don't take anything for granted, and we know we must continue to execute on all fronts. But it is clearer than ever that if you're a creator or a content owner, there is no better, more immersive global platform for your work than IMAX. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Jonathan and Heather. We are very happy to welcome to the stage now IMAX China CEO Daniel Manwaring. How's it going, Daniel?
Thank you. Good to be here.
So for those of the folks here and at home who don't know you, can you give a little bit of a background on your experience in China?
Sure. So I've been in China for 20 years. I started my career in finance. Before joining IMAX, I was with the CAA for a little over a decade, as Rich mentioned, leading our motion picture division there as well as our film finance group. I represented Chinese talent. I've worked with Chinese studios now for a very long time, probably over 12 years. And I was also fortunate to have met my wife, and she is also in the business, and so we're a filmmaking family.
Yes. Yeah, you know, not for nothing, your father-in-law, if I may, is considered the greatest filmmaker in Chinese history, Zhang Yimou, so. Your words weren't enough.
Your words weren't enough. Also my words, but yes, I agree.
So tell us a little bit about the IMAX China operation and what your team looks like for those of us who aren't familiar.
Yeah. So, you know, I think one of the keys to being successful in China is localization, and we've got a fully localized business there. We are, I think, the epitome of what a Western brand is in terms of brand power and all the stuff that I'm going to talk about with our releases and our content. But at the end of the day, we run a very localized mission, so we have 100 employees there. I'm the only Westerner who oversees our offices in Shanghai and in Beijing. But everything from, you know, our NOC offices, as we mentioned earlier, to our marketing divisions, to our accounting, I mean, these are all Chinese employees. And I think that's a real key to being successful in China, you have to localize.
So, you know, looking at 2025 as it almost wrapped up, how has the year played out versus your expectations, and what do you see ahead for 2026?
Yeah. We've done a phenomenal job this year in entertaining Chinese audiences. What I love about this year is the way the content is looking like it's going to sort of diversify towards the end of the year in terms of a level of local language Chinese content, which will probably make up somewhere between 58% and 60% of our total box office, around 35% being Hollywood, and then, you know, 7% from Japanese animation, which has had an incredible run in China. You know, just looking at some of the numbers, we've had 40 million people come through our cinemas in China, and that's up over 63% year-over-year.
A lot of that was driven by, obviously, an incredible market share. You know, year to date, we're at 5.3%, which was driven by a 73% year-over-year increase in our box office compared to 2024. So, you know, the numbers say a lot. We're really proud of that. You know, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, they're also going to have record years this year. It's been really great to see our platform there just elevate and get ready for next year. And we've talked about some of the successes. Obviously, Ne Zha 2, we were really successful in capturing a huge portion of that box office. And, you know, it wasn't by accident.
We've got a really fortunate position with our brand in China where we get to see these films ahead of time, and we knew well in advance that was going to be a whale of a movie, and we positioned properly, and we're really proud of that number. But then, you know, Formula 1 coming in June and doing 42% of that box office on less than 1% of the screens, and Demon Slayer, and then obviously most recently, you know, Zootopia, which still has very long legs, and that's all before Avatar 3. So we've got a lot to look forward to.
Yeah. And speaking of, any sense of what's to come in 2026 or?
Yeah. So next year, Chinese New Year falls February 17th, which is a little later than normal. We are getting one extra day, which is a really positive thing. We most likely won't start to see films date for Chinese New Year until around January. That's typically very normal. Right now, it's kind of like all the horses are in a pen, and people are trading horses for which slots are going to go Chinese New Year versus the summer. But we do have a pretty good idea of some titles that are going to be coming up for that period. Some of them I'll mention, you know, Penghu Zhizhan, which is a big war epic movie, not dissimilar from like Braveheart, as anticipated to possibly go Chinese New Year. Zhang Yimou's She Diao will very most likely go during Chinese New Year. That has got an incredible cast. I mean, it's to Rich's point on The Odyssey, it's like a red carpet type cast.
We also have Pegasus 3, which is a franchise that we've done very well in the past. The lead actor of that is a gentleman named Shen Teng, who is probably one of the biggest actors in China and has not had a movie this year, so it'll be the first time audiences get to see him again. The Boonie Bears franchise, which is always a consistent winner during Chinese New Year, as well as potentially a spinoff of Chen Sicheng's movie, who did the Detective Chinatown series, which we have a long history with being very successful, so there's a lot to look forward to, and that's just 2026, and we're also finally, and this is pretty rare, to be honest, we're seeing some transparency even into 2027, so I can tell you now, you know, Wandering Earth 3 and 4 are actually currently in production.
I visited that set a few months ago, and it is just something like nobody's seen before. I mean, this may not be on the level of Narnia, but for China, it is massive. Also, The Three-Body Problem, which was a series that maybe many of you have seen on Netflix, that is widely known as China's most famous and sought-after sci-fi IP. That is going to be directed by Zhang Yimou as well, and that'll be likely releasing in 2027. Those dates, again, not confirmed, but it's going into production, and we're pretty hopeful of that. Godzilla X Kong, another one of those coming to China. They have always done really well for us there. Frozen 3.
Then there's another film called Death Stranding, which is based off of a gaming IP that has a lot of huge following in China that I think could also see some success there.
So when you get behind some of those eye-popping box office numbers that you mentioned earlier, what kind of content is working at the Chinese box office? And then to answer the eternal question, is Hollywood back at the Chinese box office?
Well, I'll answer the second question first. I think last weekend was a nice answer to that question. You know, we're doing over $20 million on Zootopia 2, which was a really strong signal that, yes, Hollywood will always have a place in China. And I think the key to your first question is what leads to a successful movie in China. Number one, it's got to be an event, right?
It has to be something that culturally resonates with people. It has to feel like an event. It has to feel big. And that's something that plays to our advantage tremendously. I also think that people are, you know, for many years, there were a lot of ways in which Chinese studios could kind of manipulate the system a little bit, whether it was purchasing your own tickets on that first Friday to, you know, show a huge opening day or manipulating some of the word-of-mouth statistics. That's all changed. You know, we've seen a large return to normalcy, and that's a really healthy thing for the market, particularly word-of-mouth. I mean, word-of-mouth is driving everything in China right now. And that transparency between, you know, what people feel when they walk out of the cinema and what's on social media only seconds later is just so narrow now.
Again, that's somewhere where we are really fortunate to succeed because as of now, we generate about 30% of the word-of-mouth on any given IMAX title, and what I mean by that is if you go on some of the ticketing apps, you'll see if the review was done by someone who watched the film in IMAX, there's a small IMAX logo right next to it, and those reviews rise all the way to the top. They're the most thorough, they're the most honest, they're the most transparent, and most importantly, authentic, so we make up a big part of the word-of-mouth. A lot of the ticketing platforms really rely on us for that, and it's a great position
to be in. Yeah, and so how do you collaborate with filmmakers and studios to create those events and build that word-of-mouth?
Sure, so it starts really early. It starts as early as the development stage, actually. We will oftentimes go into meetings with a Chinese filmmaker, and he's still finishing the script, and he's talking to us about where he wants this aspect ratio to come in and how it can be presented on IMAX in the best possible way. I'm doing dozens of set visits throughout the year, mainly focused on our Filmed for IMAX titles, of which this year we did more than any other previous year. But we're a real partner during the development and production process. And then, obviously, it doesn't end there. It actually gets even more important when we start to talk about the distribution. You know, now our platform in China contributes the second highest amount of box office, second only to Wanda, which is our largest client.
So, you know, we command quite a bit of weight when it comes to distribution, and the studios and the filmmakers make sure that they get in with us early to ensure that the distribution of their film is done properly on IMAX. So, yeah, that's a little insight as to our process.
And also give us some insight into the role of China Film Bureau and the government and what our relationships are like there.
Sure. Well, I'll start a little bit with policy. You know, that's always been a topic of interest: what is the policy like in China? And I have to say it's extremely favorable right now. You know, we're seeing basically almost every single film that wants to get in is getting in.
Not only is it getting in, in fact, I think this year every studio film that was asking for a day-and-date release was able to get that. You know, the policy right now is let's get back to business. The Film Bureau has their own KPI. They're trying to maximize box office, and they want to do whatever is possible to bring more foreign content in, as well as boosting the Chinese language content. Now, with respect to our relationship with the Film Bureau, I have to say it's a pretty unique one. They see us as a local company in many ways, but they see us as a foreign expert. You know, we're invited into backdoor sort of rooms and meetings that most foreign companies are just simply not invited to.
Very often they're leaning on us when they're making policy changes, when they're thinking about how to grow box office. We're part of those conversations. It's a very unique position to be in, and we work with them very, very well. You know, we don't see a change anytime soon in that progress.
Shifting gears a little bit, what is the strategy for network growth in China?
Sure. Currently we operate 800 theaters in China. We span across 220 cities. 90% of those cities have a population of over 1 million, and in fact, 17 of those cities have a population of over 10 million. You know, it's easy to think, well, 800 theaters in China, what does that really mean? I mean, when you look at the numbers of the populations of these cities, it is really, really big.
Now, going back to your question about growth, we're going to be really surgical in how we grow. We are already looking at, you know, replacing a lot of current PLFs there. In fact, we signed a deal with Wanda earlier this year that I think represents certainly a part of how we intend to expand. Part of that deal was going in and replacing a large number of their own PLF, which is called Wanda Prime, as well as a lot of the top Dolby sites that Wanda also operates. So we really like that. We really like targeting high-traffic areas, cinemas and complexes that have a proven history of box office that we can model out really well and going and stealing theaters away from our competition. In addition to that, though, I think there's also a lot of other areas to grow in.
You know, we just recently opened a theater in Urumqi in Xinjiang. We have a theater that's doing very well in Tibet. China's a big place. You know, there's always going to be these new areas in which you can grow in, and we're constantly looking for those as well. So it's sort of a bifurcated approach on doing upgrades and renovating and taking over existing complexes, as well as continuing to keep an eye on new construction in new areas.
So Wanda, as you mentioned a number of times, is still our biggest exhibition partner in the world. How is that relationship changing and evolving and growing?
Yeah. Our relationship with them is phenomenal. You know, as many of the folks here might know, Wanda Film was acquired by Ruyi earlier this year. We had worked with Ruyi for many years even before this acquisition. The transaction was backed by Tencent, which has offered a lot of great synergies with Tencent. We had worked with them for many, many years on the film side of the business, but now we're doing even more. You know, we've done two of the League of Legends matches, for which Tencent owns Riot Games. We're looking to do a lot more on the esports front. We really like that demographic. And, you know, Wanda is, they see us as a strategic partner to their growth. Post the transaction of Ruyi and Wanda, you know, we've seen Wanda start to upgrade their lobbies faster than ever. And I think we even have an image here of one of those lobbies.
They're really in the process of just leveling up their entire network, and they've made it very clear to us from day one that IMAX is a crucial part to that. So, you know, fortunately, we're in a fantastic position with them right now. So overall, I missed one thing.
No, please.
Yeah. Sorry, I want to mention this because I think probably today we'll be announcing a strategic partnership with them to go out and develop more merchandise. So because of these beautiful lobbies, there's a lot of shelf space that is available there to bring more merchandise into those systems. And it's going to be a combination of sort of our own merchandise that, you know, Anne showed a little bit earlier. But we're also going to be really focusing on the localization of the IP that makes sense for China there.
So whether it's co-branding, you know, small figurines with Chinese characters and IP that resonates, or partnerships with Japanese companies who are releasing films and have certain products that we know the Chinese are going to be really excited about. Obviously, Labubu came out of China. They're very good at making cute, fuzzy things that people buy. So we see that as a really interesting opportunity and a chance for us to open up a new realm of getting closer to our customer through the use of that merchandise.
So how do you plan to do that overall over the next couple of years? What are your strategic priorities, and what do you see as the greatest opportunities for IMAX China?
Sure. Well, first and foremost, network growth. You know, we're never going to stop growing, as well as market share and box office growth. Those will always remain our highest priorities no matter what. So I've talked a little bit about, I think, how we're going to approach that. We're also going to be really doubling down on digital. We see that as an incredible force in growing our market share. We've used a lot of new data techniques this year to get to, you know, this record-high market share that we've had so far. So we're going to be focusing on digital. We're also going to be really looking hard at our B2C relationship, our direct relationship with the customer, forging that consumer journey that starts in the cinema but really follows a life out of the cinema and connects to their WeChat, connects to the products that they buy, developing that ecosystem around the IMAX brand.
You know, one thing that just constantly gets me excited, and I see this often. In fact, I was talking to someone last night who had also seen this on their feed in social media. You know, very often you'll be swiping on TikTok or one of the local content platforms, and you'll see people taking pictures of their IMAX tickets. And it's almost like a badge of pride that, you know, they bought the IMAX tickets and they're boasting about it on social media. I mean, you see it throughout. We've seen it tremendously through Zootopia, but you see it during Chinese New Year. And that to us, I think, is just such a compelling, direct example of how influential our brand is in China.
Continuing to grow that stickiness with the consumer, I think, is going to be something that we look really hard at as we grow.
Great. Well, thank you very much, Daniel. Daniel Manwaring, CEO, IMAX China.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being with us. As Rich mentioned earlier, I've been with IMAX since 2012, and over this period, my main mandate has been to grow the IMAX network. Today I have to start by telling you that at no point in time in these 13 years I've ever seen an appetite for IMAX as strong as I'm seeing today. And at no point in time I've ever seen an opportunity for future growth as big and as global as I'm seeing today. And this obviously makes me very excited. It's really that simple. More cinema operators want more IMAX systems.
Given how markets and consumer trends are evolving, we see more opportunity than ever before to add more IMAX locations to our estate. Today I briefly want to touch on why this is happening. I want to give you some insights on the opportunity as we see it. Then I want to tell you, of course, what we're going to do to capture that opportunity. In my view, the best and most concrete proof point of the appetite for IMAX is our growth trajectory over the years. IMAX went from being in a handful of locations in a couple of markets to now having, you heard it, 1,800 venues in 90 countries all around the world. Sometimes I like to remind myself that we are actually in more countries than Starbucks is. It's about to get even better.
I mean, if you look back, you can see that there have been some pivotal points in our history when our growth model really got supercharged. One of them, if not the biggest one of all, was the first Avatar release in 2009. That's when IMAX went from selling 35 systems the year prior to then selling 220 systems the year after that Avatar release. Quite incredible. What we're seeing now is that we're going right into another one of these historical moments. We are heading into a 12-month period where the sequencing of extraordinary IMAX titles will really supercharge our growth. Some of those titles are the ones that were referred by Heather earlier. I mean, Avatar: Fire and Ash, then The Mandalorian and Grogu, The Odyssey, Narnia, Dune Part 3.
We really expect peaks in box office, which drive peaks in sales, and will ultimately drive peaks in our growth. Since I'm seeing the Narnia artwork up on screen, I've got to tell you I was also privileged to be on the Narnia set back in September in the U.K. with Rich. Of course, I cannot tell you anything. I would like to tell you a lot of things, but I'm going to mention that I've rarely seen anything of that quality and that scale. I'm really looking forward to it. Now, let me tell you why we are experiencing this extraordinary momentum. There are many factors that drive the opportunity for IMAX, but the fundamental reason lies in the unique end-to-end model that IMAX operates, which is essentially a self-feeding virtuous cycle geared for growth.
The more IMAX systems we put out there, the more relevant the format becomes for all the stakeholders in the industry, starting with filmmakers. The filmmakers commit to IMAX, and that enables IMAX to have a very special, unique version of a movie on our canvas, exclusive to IMAX. With that in mind, we see audiences seeking out that very special content. We see audiences seeking out IMAX screenings, and that drives higher box office in IMAX. Higher box office means higher revenues for our exhibitor partners who want to do more IMAX locations. And the model keeps feeding itself. If you allow me, it's like a multiplier effect. The more resources you put out there in the marketplace, the more growth you get. Very importantly, our model is really geared towards delivering benefits and tangible value to all the stakeholders in the ecosystem.
We want filmmakers to leverage IMAX to put their creative vision on our canvas, on the best possible screens, and present it in the best possible quality. We want studios to leverage IMAX to boost their box office. We want exhibitors to use IMAX to bring more audiences into their theaters. We want to enable everybody to deliver an exceptional entertainment experience and make more money while they're doing that. The relationships that we have with these stakeholders are really critically important to what we do at IMAX. With cinema operators, for instance, we're not in the business of selling a piece of hardware and then off we go to the next transaction. Our philosophy is to treat our clients as partners. So we go into every deal, into every transaction with a view of opening a venue that will then deliver value to that partner.
And then we liaise with that partner over the years to make sure that that is indeed the case over time. Look, in the same way as Rich mentioned, we have relationships with world's best filmmakers. We also have relationships with the world's best cinema operators. These are relationships that have taken us years, sometimes decades to build, and many flights in my case. But it's also what makes IMAX what it is. And it makes our model almost impossible to replicate. We curate these partnerships. For example, for our exhibitor partners, we run an event for our 40 top clients around the world every year. We get them together for an offsite gathering, inviting the CEOs of the world's best cinema operators so that we can discuss key topics affecting the industry, but also, very importantly, so that we can spend time together.
It has become a family for us. We have chief executives flying from all over the world, from Australia, from Japan, from France, you name it, and we invite very special guests, industry executives, talent and filmmakers, guests in previous editions, including the likes of Christopher Nolan, Tom Cruise, Denis Villeneuve, Joe Kosinski, and many, many others. We also leverage key industry gatherings, but in a very different way than anybody else does. Speaking of flights, tomorrow I have the joy of enduring a 20-hour journey to get from here to Bangkok for CineAsia, which is the most relevant conference in that part of the world. We're going to be there, but we're not going to do what everybody else does. We're not going to have a booth on the trade show floor. We're not going to do a PowerPoint presentation.
Instead, we're going to make a point of meeting face-to-face with all the key stakeholders in the industry over there, especially exhibitor partners. We're going to understand how their markets are doing, if their IMAX locations are delivering the performance that they're supposed to. And of course, we're going to talk about the next steps in the partnership. Not just that, though. With our positioning in the ecosystem, we're going to leverage our access to all stakeholders to introduce them to each other. For instance, we sometimes are asked to introduce CEOs of local exhibition chains to studio heads and vice versa. All of this is to say that we're really proud of how we relate to our customer base. And I actually believe that the video that you just saw is very tangible proof of how our partners are looking at IMAX.
This approach is what made IMAX what it is today. The good news is that it works, and you don't have to take my word for it. The data speaks for itself. Especially in recent years, we have proven that we can not only continue, but we can actually accelerate our growth path. Looking at hard facts, we are on track to close 2025 this year with at least 166 system signings. To put that in perspective, that's 16% more than our system signings in 2019. We're doing better sales-wise than in the so-called much-revered pre-pandemic year. Since 2019, we also increased the size of our network by 15% at a point in time when, as you would know, the global cinema screen count actually decreased by 3%. It's really undeniable that the appetite for IMAX is at an all-time high.
Something I think it's worth noting is that that demand and that opportunity is as global and diverse and balanced as it has ever been. The appetite for IMAX is truly a universal phenomenon. Up until recently, our sales were typically driven by one or two key growth markets. If you look at the decade of 2010 to 2020, it was the U.S. first, and then China, accounting for the lion's share of our signings. That's no longer the case. I mean, 10 years ago, 2016, for example, China accounted for 75% of our system signings. This year, China is on track to account for 13% of our system signings, with all other regions of the world making a very material and balanced contribution to that total. That's a great thing because our growth story is no longer tied to one or two markets.
The same goes for our clients. Look, during a time where the industry has been facing so many challenges, we are bringing more and more exhibitor partners into our business. We see more and more exhibitors choosing IMAX. In the past five years alone, we have added 56 partners to the IMAX business, going from 201 partners back in 2019 to now 257 partners. So our customer base is expanding massively. And that may seem like a small data point, but for us, it's incredibly important because we're proving that the IMAX model is viable for a very diverse array of cinema operators and not just for a handful of big chains. So that's critically important. And of course, it's not just about sales. It's also about deploying the theaters that are contracted. And we have developed an amazing track record in being able to fulfill those installations.
Our growth is fueled by our ability to make those projects real. This year, we expect to end the year with up to 160 installations, which, as you will know, is at the very top end of our earlier guidance. And as you will hear from Natasha later on, we expect this momentum to continue into 2026. But the most exciting part of the story is that we're still very far away from our end goal. Based on our last TAM analysis, we are at only 39% of global penetration by open venues. So there are over 2,700 zones that could be served by one IMAX venue and yet do not have one. And you'll have to excuse my excitement, but for someone who works in sales, this is a dream scenario. I mean, we have continued appetite. We have a model that we have proven works extremely well.
We have locations that keep doing better and better. We have hundreds of places around the world that are still underserved, places where people would want to go and watch an IMAX movie, but they don't have an IMAX venue to go to. This is a very good position to be in. I do want to tell you a bit more about that TAM analysis. Some of you may be familiar with the fact that we tend to update this analysis every couple of years, usually. The last time we did that was 2023. At the time, we concluded that there were 3,600 trading zones around the world that could sustain an IMAX venue. This year, we re-ran the analysis. When we looked at the data, we actually concluded that that number is closer to 4,500. You would ask why. What happened.
Are you guys going crazy? And the reality is that we are in a completely different position. We are in a different position as a business and as a company, as you heard from Rich. We are in a different world in terms of consumer demand. And very importantly, with IMAX being in a different position, our clients are also in a completely different world. Their performance increases as our performance improves. I would say there are five key main reasons for the increase in TAM, and in no particular order. The first one is certainly that IMAX virtuous cycle model that I was talking about earlier, that multiplier effect. The more IMAX systems we deploy, the more opportunity to add more systems because demand increases. And let's remember, markets change over time. They evolve, or we understand them better. China, I think, is a very good example.
When we approached China 15 or so years ago, at the time, I believe we thought that there was space for up to 60 IMAX venues in the territory. Now we have 800. The second reason for the increase in TAM is certainly tied to the increased consumer appetite for IMAX and the increased IMAX market share. It's well documented that consumer spend for premium cinema going is at an all-time high, and IMAX is taking an even larger share of that spend, so at some point back in the days, we thought that $20 million in overall box office, not just IMAX, was needed to support successfully one IMAX venue. That number is now much lower because a larger portion of consumer spend in cinema going goes into premium and especially into IMAX.
We actually believe that nowadays we need about $7 million in box office spend to sustain successfully one IMAX venue. The third reason has to do with our methodology, which I have to say it's more sophisticated than it was before, thanks in no small part to the availability now of very good AI -power tools that make our life easier. They let us understand way better the markets in which we trade or the markets in which we want to trade. For example, there are tools out there that we can use to estimate consumer drive times or whether in that particular area consumers are willing to spend for premium entertainment. The bottom line is that we understand our target markets better than ever before. The fourth reason, you heard it loud and clear from my colleagues, it's the content offering. It's stronger than ever before.
And especially, I would say it's as differentiated as it has ever been. The Film for IMAX program allows us to put a very different version of the movie on our canvas. And it's a version that nobody else can have. Our efforts in local language, for instance, are making titles available in IMAX that have never been seen in our format before. And the IMAX releases with film prints, for instance, add yet another element of differentiation that nobody else can have. The fifth and final reason that I would quote for our increase in TAM is the power of our brand and the marketing associated with it, which, as you heard from Anne, is as strong and as prominent as it has ever been. You would have now all seen those posters with the big IMAX logo, bigger than the movie title. That stuff drives demand.
And with increased demand comes an increase in the opportunity. So with this amazing runway ahead, how do we get to 4,500 venues around the world? Look, doing what we've been doing so far is certainly part of the recipe, but it's not the whole story. I should also note that operating in 90+ countries means deploying and devising strategies that are customized for each one of these territories. So it's really difficult to generalize, but there is some common ground. So today, we identified four key areas of opportunity that we thought it would be worth discussing with you. First of all, there are undoubtedly some heavily under-penetrated markets out there that deserve an IMAX venue because the appetite is very strong, performance has been extremely strong, and yet they don't have one. These are the proverbial low-hanging fruit.
In the past, we often talked about the likes of Australia, Japan, France. By the way, if anyone would like to delve deeper into a specific territory, I would be very happy to do that. That's my passion and my life. Today, we picked an example. We thought we would talk about Indonesia because we don't talk a lot about Indonesia, but it's a very good example of a market where our growth is tied to the overall growth of the industry in that particular territory. It's also a very good example of how our TAM evolves over time. I mean, in 2019, we had Indonesia zoned for 16 IMAX venues. Today, we have 18 IMAX venues open and very successful. Indonesia currently has 2,400 cinema screens serving a population of 280 million.
To put that in perspective, the U.S. has 40,000 cinema screens serving a population of about 340 million, so it's undeniable that the cinema industry in Indonesia is poised for growth. The screen count will increase, and IMAX is very well placed to be part of that growth. In the past two years alone, we almost doubled our network size in the market. To enable this growth, we have also deployed a very customized content strategy. I don't know how many of you would know, but Indonesian audiences love horror movies to the point that five of the top 10 box office titles last year were horror films. So what did we do? We made Indonesian horror blockbusters available in the IMAX format, and this had an amazing effect on the performance of our venues.
So you can expect that we will continue with this effort in the years to come. We're also deeply embedded in our relationship with Cinema 21, which is by far the market leader in the territory. We are part of their considerations when they look at new venues, new projects. So with all of this in mind, we believe that Indonesia can actually sustain up to 60 IMAX venues, with the main hurdle timing-wise being obviously the development of the cinema and retail infrastructure in the market. Besides under-penetrated global markets, besides that low-hanging fruit, the past few years have really shown us that the North American market continues to be an amazing growth opportunity for IMAX. I remember having a very heated argument with someone who was telling me that the U.S. is saturated for IMAX. That couldn't be more wrong. Actually, our opportunity in North America is twofold.
First of all, the big chains are doubling down on IMAX. You would have all read about our deal with AMC earlier this year, our deal with Cinemark a couple of months ago. They want more IMAX venues because they deliver, again, tangible advantages. We are, in fact, currently in talks with certain big players to identify the next batch of new locations that we would add to their network. But it's not just about the big chains. Especially the last two to three years have really shown us how there is a much increased appetite for medium to small-sized players. These are operators who are putting very interesting entertainment offerings out there. Sometimes they are replacing older infrastructures. Sometimes they're actually going to compete with that infrastructure. And for us, this is very positive because, first of all, buying from these players widens the target market.
And with that, we're able to pick the best locations to go in. But also, quite frankly, it puts competitive pressures on the bigger players. And that's very good for our growth and our model. So we believe that this broadening of target market will have really a positive impact on us in the years to come. And when we look at where we can grow, we are also believing that existing trading zones have become underserved. And with that in mind, there is an opportunity to add more IMAX venues into existing zones where an IMAX location is already located. Let me explain this in a bit more detail. As you may know, part of the value proposition that IMAX presents to the exhibition partners is the provision of an exclusivity zone, a radius around a venue where we commit that we're not going to open another IMAX.
Over time, both exhibitors and IMAX started to realize how some markets have really outgrown their zones. This ties back to the point about the TAM changing and the increased appetite for the format. Over time, we have seen cinema operators adding additional IMAX venues within the same trading zone, quite simply because there is more demand than there was before. As a matter of fact, across North America alone, there are 74 zones where one or more IMAX venues have been successfully added already to an existing zone, and very importantly, without cannibalization to the existing venue, and we're gradually starting to see this phenomenon in other parts of the world, places like the U.K. or Japan, and we believe that there is way more opportunity in that space.
We actually estimate that there are about 200 existing zones around the world that have already an IMAX venue where we can successfully add at least another IMAX location. So that plus 200 zones is part of the 4,500 revised TAM that I was talking about earlier. Some of them are a no-brainer, like think about New York City. The entire New York City area has only seven IMAX venues for a population of about 8.5 million. Manhattan alone has four IMAX venues only, all located between 69th and 30th Street. So there is nothing outside of that pocket. There is undeniably an opportunity out there with these existing zones. Finally, but very importantly, when we think about ways we can boost our growth, we see a strong opportunity to leverage our capital position to enable transactions that would not otherwise be possible.
There are many great cinema operators out there with very viable businesses, which, unfortunately, at this specific point in time, are capital constrained. These are cinema operators with whom we would like to add more IMAX venues, and they would like to add more IMAX venues with us, but they have a liquidity issue, and it's a short-term liquidity issue. So what we are doing is that we're devising new deal structures where we will look at funding certain high-performing locations where we see a very high ROI opportunity, and we believe that this is a way to get quicker, faster into better locations that would not otherwise be possible with a win-win situation for all parties involved. I want to conclude with a brief reference to what we sometimes call the IMAX flagships. There are some IMAX venues around the world that have really established themselves as flagship destinations.
These are places that people take planes to go to, to watch a movie. Some of them, it's because of their architectural profile. Some of them is for features, the screen size. Some of them is for heritage. I mean, we have some locations that have been out there for decades: the BFI IMAX in London, AMC Lincoln Square, the Melbourne Museum. But there are also some new ones that have been built in recent years. Grand Cinema Sunshine in Tokyo, which is the one that you see up there, is an amazing IMAX venue located on top of a high- rise. And I remember visiting it for the first time. It was in construction. They took me up these very narrow staircases, and I got to that lobby, and I had the most amazing view of Tokyo that I've ever seen. And that is the IMAX lobby.
Then you go into this incredible auditorium. I thought to myself, I think people will fly from all over Japan to try and watch a movie in this space. Sure enough, I met someone a year ago who confessed that they flew 12 hours from another continent to watch a movie in this venue. By the way, this is a venue that is regularly amongst the top five best-performing IMAXes around the world. There are more. I mean, Traumpalast in Germany is the largest IMAX in the world, which has been recently built. Mall of the Emirates in Dubai was recently redesigned and refurbished and now has set a new bar for premium cinema going. We believe that these projects are really important at a point in time where consumers are seeking out experiential entertainment.
So we're going to do whatever we can to enable these projects in as many locations as possible. And the good news is that we have conversations currently ongoing for flagship destination theaters, at least in every continent of the world. So you can expect to see more of these places that we really believe carry the IMAX brand and allows us to explain to the world what IMAX is all about. Thank you for enduring my monologue. I hope I've conveyed why I started the presentation by saying that I'm really excited about what's going on at the moment and why I believe there has never been such a good time to be in the IMAX business. Thank you.
Please welcome Mark Welton, our Global President of IMAX Theatres.
Perfect. Good morning, everyone. I don't know whose suggestion it was that technology has to follow both content and sales, but anyway, I'm really happy to be here. With my fancy title, as Rich said, I lead our global sales development and operations teams across 1,800 theaters in 90 countries and also oversee our technology and operation office in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. And so today, I'm going to try to bring a little bit of technology to Hollywood. I've been with the company now 29 years. And really, what's remained the same throughout has been the core values of our technology, which is passion, innovation, and unparalleled quality. Our technology really is, I think Rich mentioned, is really the foundation of our business and really the engine that drives the most immersive movie-going experience there is. It really connects.
I've been traveling recently and meeting a bunch of clients, and from London to Dublin to Korea to Dallas. It really resonated with me that our technology really connects that brand we talked about not only to our exhibitor partners, but to audiences around the world. Our technology is a purpose-built ecosystem. What do I mean by that? It all starts in the sales process. Our sales teams work with our partners, and we pick the most iconic, best locations there are. We have designers that design the locations from the ground up. We bring in our project managers. We bring in our installers. They work with our clients to, first of all, open every location on time and really kind of create where the magic happens.
And then so if you take the proprietary design, you take the wall-to-wall screens, the projection, the sound, the post-production tools like Rich mentioned, DMR, the camera platform, and our 24-hour monitoring system. It really works in one seamless IMAX platform. I'm often asked, do we have competitors? We do have competitors, but really, they can't do what we do. And what do I mean by that? Well, I'm going to give you just a very brief example because I'm under the gun here. I was meeting with one of our partners a little while ago, a couple of weeks ago, and we were talking about our locations we're opening next year, about the design of the locations, about what type of projection and sound. We were talking about the seating, the carpet, the portal, et cetera.
I was informed that they were going to put a PLF into the same complex. In my mind, I looked at them. I said, well, maybe you can save on some construction costs. They looked at me, and they said, well, we're just putting a laser projector in a standard box with standard sound. That was the difference, right? They don't have 100+ designers, technicians, engineers working daily to make the IMAX experience better. They don't have a 24-hour monitoring system. They don't have an in-house production team. They surely don't have relationships with the filmmakers like Chris Nolan and Denis Villeneuve that actually consider our camera platform the gold standard of cinema. At IMAX, we're not a collection of parts. We're really an end-to-end solution, as Rich mentioned, that wants to make the IMAX experience every day.
Together, if you take the technology, the post-production tools like DMR, if you take our camera platform, our monitoring system, and of course, our global network reach, you really create a competitive moat that no one can match. So let's talk a little bit about innovation. IMAX has a legacy of innovation, right? 40 years ago, we were the pioneers of stadium seating. 30 years ago, as we mentioned, we developed the proprietary digital remastering DMR process that transformed film into the IMAX format. And recently, we ignited the modern 3D revolution with titles like Avatar. And we continue to evolve today. We have worked every part of the IMAX experience over the years. We went from theater design. We went from film projection to digital projection to laser projection, both for our iconic sites and for our commercial sites.
We actually went from film cameras to digital cameras and actually back to film cameras, which I explain later. That evolution still continues today. As I said, with our DMR process, which again takes out the grain of every frame, makes a sharper resolution, as I think Rich mentioned, we have moved it into the cloud. This has been a real catalyst. It gave us more creative control, quicker delivery, and a real catalyst for our local language program. We've talked a little bit about our NOC centers, Network Operations Centres. If you're in Mumbai or if you're in Springfield, Illinois, our NOC centers in Toronto and Shanghai monitor the systems 24/7, 24 hours a day, seven days a week in real time. They track the brightness. They track the performance. They track calibration.
And now recently, we've used AI to bring it together and to help us prevent problems better, predict problems, and prevent solutions, prevent problems, right? This really has helped reduce our costs because, as I said, I think Rich mentioned this, but it helps us. We have depots all over the world, so it helps manage our parts depots. We have technicians all over the world, so we can better organize them and have them ready for business when we need it to them. And what's really transpired now is our system uptime is 99.92%. Now think of this, 99.92% in 1,800 theaters in 90 countries. It's just amazing. And that same spirit fuels our partnerships with filmmakers that really push and challenge us, pushes our technology forward, and sets IMAX apart. And nowhere is that commitment more evident than working with one of the greatest filmmakers of our generation.
After the box office success and Oscars success of Oppenheimer, Chris Nolan approached us. He wanted to shoot his next film entirely with the IMAX cameras, and it would be actually the first Hollywood production to ever do so. Problem was there was one catch. Our existing IMAX camera fleet couldn't do what Chris wanted, but we thought, hey, listen, if Chris wants to do it, let's try to make it happen, so Chris and his cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, met with our engineers, and they worked over a two-year period, especially on noise. We wanted to try to develop a camera system that was quieter, that was lighter, that was more flexible to allow Chris to show his artistic vision of his movie. As I said, I've been there 29 years now. To me, the result was extraordinary in what we did in two years.
We developed a new generation of IMAX film cameras that not only kept the iconic quality and scale of our existing cameras, but there was more modern design, modern software, smarter design, and more flexible to allow Chris to shoot his next movie, but the breakthroughs didn't stop there because even though we reduced our existing camera's noise by 30%, it still wasn't quiet enough to shoot those intimate sounds of dialogue, so our engineers got together again, and in the same two-year period, last time, they built a film enclosure system or what we call sound blimp, and this substantially reduced the noise of the cameras, so the first time ever, our filmmakers could shoot in sync sound and capture clean, usable dialogue while filming. Ultimately, this breakthrough allowed Chris to use the IMAX film cameras to shoot his entire film, The Odyssey, with IMAX.
And in his words, he said, "This is a game changer. I have to read this one. It allows intimate moments of performance on the world's most beautiful format." So this same spirit and what's next drives everything we do at IMAX, a conscious pursuit to make every part of the IMAX experience even better. We're advancing the next evolution of projection. We're looking at how do we make our sound mixes better and more efficient. But remember, we have to bring that into that purpose-built ecosystem, all to ensure that every IMAX location delivers that same clarity, that same brightness, that power, the scale that I talked about earlier. And as we did with our film cameras, we're really looking at how to reimagine our film projectors. Can we make them smaller? Can we make them lighter?
Can we make them scalable so that more audiences and more filmmakers can experience this iconic format? And what we've done with The Odyssey, by the time The Odyssey is released next summer, we've actually now increased the number of film locations by 25%. So The Odyssey will be in 40 film locations next year. For nearly six decades, we have pushed the limits of sound, image, scale, and this legacy of innovation and quality will shape the future of IMAX going forward. Now let's take a look. For over 50 years, IMAX has developed revolutionary technology that enhances every step of the filmmaking process.
When audiences buy an IMAX ticket, they want an experience that they can't get at home or anywhere else. To do that, we need to deliver on the forefront of technology every single day. Our job is to make the impossible possible.
From set to screen, IMAX's enduring commitment to innovation has produced the world's most immersive movie experience. Long before the cameras roll, filmmakers and IMAX worked together to achieve their extraordinary visions. The film for IMAX branded movies are the ones that were really actively involved from the very beginning of the process.
April of 2024 was the first time we heard the vision and the plan for the The Odyssey. This is going to be the first movie shot exclusively in 1.43 IMAX. It all starts with the camera. We gave it modern electronic controls. We gave it a brighter viewfinder, made lenses that focus smoother. You can think of it as a smart camera. The custom-designed camera enclosure absorbs all audio, allowing filmmakers, for the first time, to capture sync sound with the IMAX film cameras. These advancements to the IMAX film camera and IMAX-certified digital cameras have eliminated significant production barriers and generated unprecedented demand from the world's top filmmakers.
Putting six IMAX cameras in the cockpit with the actors makes you feel what it's like to be in one of these amazing machines. During the post-production process, pioneering technology perfects every detail of the movie, enhancing both imagery and audio. A lot of filmmakers are a little trepidatious when they come in for the first time. They say, "I'm not so sure. I've not really dealt with IMAX before." But the second they see it on that screen. It's like you're performing a miracle before their eyes, making it better than what they thought that they could have. Through the proprietary process of digital media remastering, or DMR, any film can be enhanced to realize the filmmaker's vision in IMAX.
98% of the time, they say, "This is the way we want everybody to see it. Once a picture has been perfected, a custom audio mix creates a fully immersive sound experience, placing the viewer in the heart of the action. At the end of the journey comes the final presentation where audiences across the world can experience cinema the way it deserves to be seen.
Literally, every single department within IMAX is devoted to quality. We're not just talking about quality of the image or quality of the sound. We're talking about what does it feel like to sit in the seat? What does the screen look like? IMAX Theatres are designed for complete immersion, featuring state-of-the-art laser projectors and sound systems designed to deliver a visceral experience, and through our Network Operations Center in Toronto and China, we monitor all of our theaters around the world in real time 24/7, with over 99% of support being managed remotely. Our live calibration is the reason. We're the only company that can tell a filmmaker how you're seeing it right now in this theater, is exactly how everybody else is going to be seeing it in the field. With advanced AI systems embedded into every stage of the pipeline, IMAX's cutting-edge technology and our unwavering obsession for quality continue to redefine the limits of storytelling.
We are the only end-to-end technology platform in the world for blockbuster cinematic entertainment. Filmmakers don't want their vision tarnished by compromises. We give them tools and technologies to deliver the best version of their work every step of the way. That's why filmmakers choose IMAX.
Thanks to my colleagues who presented this morning. And now it's time for the most exciting segment, the numbers. And in IMAX's case, it really is true, as we are in a record year with much more to come. Today, I'm happy to be here to share IMAX's financial strategy and outlook, and I underscore our unwavering commitment to sustainable growth and shareholder value. Let's recap what you've heard today from the IMAX management team about the pillars of our business and our future. IMAX is a global entertainment technology company with 1,800 locations in 90 countries, setting the pace with industry-leading camera, content remastering, projection, and sound technology. Our iconic brand is fueling fandom. IMAX inspires filmmakers and empowers exhibitors and studios to deliver the world's most immersive experiences. Our asset-light model is a strategic advantage, driving high margins and low leverage.
With 700 employees worldwide, we achieve what others cannot: scaling impact without scaling costs. Our licensing and recurring revenue model provides a foundation of financial stability and predictability that gives us the confidence to invest, innovate, and grow. Above all, we are laser-focused on delivering long-term shareholder returns through balancing investment in our future with returns through share repurchases. Turning to our business model, we have two major operating segments: content solutions and technology products and services. Our content solutions segment captures revenues generated through our relationships with studios and content creators, from Hollywood blockbusters to local language, alternative content, and documentaries. Most of this revenue in this segment is tied to IMAX box office performance. The technology products and services segment, or TPS, captures revenues generated through our relationships with exhibitors.
All of our IMAX systems, whether sold or leased, are generally covered under 10-year agreements, which have a greater than 90% renewal rate. IMAX system sales arrangements represent systems sold for an upfront or fixed payment and a nominal box office percentage payment over the 10-year term. System rentals represent IMAX systems that are leased in exchange for rental payments and tied to box office performance. Included in all of our contracts are maintenance services, which reflect recurring revenues associated with the 24/7 location monitoring that you just saw in the tech video, over $60 million of fixed revenue annually and growing with our network. Combined between content solutions and our TPS segments, we generally translate 18% of every IMAX box office dollar to revenues.
Outside of our two major segments, we have a nominal revenue stream in streaming and consumer technology, which we see as an upside opportunity as we bring IMAX quality to a whole new market. Our global revenue has good diversity, providing durability and stability, and is fairly evenly split between domestic, Greater China, and the rest of the world. As an asset-light business, our operating costs do not significantly increase year-over-year, creating a powerful opportunity for strong and increasing flow-through to earnings, per share, EBITDA, and cash flows, which we are focused on using to return value to our shareholders. IMAX is riding and shaping macro trends. The blockbusterization of content is real, and IMAX is at the epicenter. Audiences crave premium, event-driven experiences, and we are increasingly the destination for those unforgettable moments.
Demand for the IMAX experience is surging across filmmakers, studios, audiences, and exhibitors. Content with an IMAX release helps to deliver the best global monetization outcome. And higher demand for IMAX drives network growth, allowing us to penetrate further into existing markets and expand into new markets, as Gio highlighted. And lastly, our content portfolio is more diverse and dynamic than ever, with over 200 pieces of content that Heather described and a focus on programming to maximize the utilization of our global network. The bar is set high, and we are raising it. Our priorities are clear: strong top-line growth, visible margin expansion, and increasing cash flow conversion.
For top-line growth, we are focused on translating the increasing strength of the IMAX brand that Anne highlighted, which is growing the fandom among filmmakers and consumers into tangible box office and increasing our utilization rates and, in turn, market share gains. This momentum is not just words, but it's backed up by the numbers, with our market share up 46% since 2019, as we expect to end the year with 3.8% for our global market share on just less than 1% of the screens, reaching our highest point in IMAX history. We continue to show proof points of how our business model differs from that of exhibition. Year-to-date November, domestic box office is up 1% year-over-year. IMAX is up 27% in North America. And globally, IMAX is higher by 34%. With this top-line growth comes visible margin expansion.
Today, we will be walking through how the drivers and our ever-increasing scale are resulting in a significant operating leverage and a steady march higher in our margins. Lastly, as margins expand, the flow-through to cash is a very high level, and the increase in conversion to adjusted EBITDA to free cash flows is supporting higher levels of investing in the business and shareholder returns. This is not just progress. It is propelling us forward. Before I pivot to our outlook, let's take a minute to review our year-to-date results for September. They point to IMAX operating at a new level, exceeding expectations and capturing momentum in the business. Strong growth in our operating metrics of IMAX box office, system signings, and installations combined led to revenue growth of 10%, adjusted net income up 32%, adjusted EBITDA higher by 26%, and cash from operations up 65%.
In short, we are achieving double-digit revenue growth and notably bottom-line growth that is more than three times that of revenue growth. Our year-to-date adjusted EBITDA margin is a substantial 45% compared to 39% a year ago. And these results are not just strong. They are a testament to the power of our model and the passion of our team to deliver. For 2025, we set ambitious goals, and I am pleased to announce that we are exceeding them. Earlier this week, we officially achieved an annual record for box office of $1.13 billion. And when we set this guidance a year ago, many doubted us. But with more to come in Q4, including the ongoing success of Wicked: For Good and Zootopia 2, and the most anticipated film of the year, Avatar: Fire and Ash, we are now tracking to more than $1.25 billion.
And for reference, both Avatar 1 and 2 were released in mid-December, with IMAX capturing over $100 million in the year of release. To date, 133 system installations have been completed this year, and we are tracking to the very high end of our full-year 150-160 system installation range. And lastly, for adjusted EBITDA margin, which we guided to the low 40%, is expected to be at or above 43% for this year. And today, we are excited to announce guidance for 2026 that reflects strong growth across all metrics: box office of approximately $1.4 billion with mega titles in every quarter, Avatar: Fire and Ash in Q1, The Mandalorian and Grogu in Q2, The Odyssey in Q3, and Narnia and Dune: Part Three in Q4. With 9%-12% IMAX box office growth in 2026, we expect these mega titles will be catalysts for growth in system installations year-over-year.
Our system installations guidance for 2026 is to be between 160-175 systems, and supporting this level of installations is a committed backlog of over 470 systems, including detailed rollout plans with our exhibition partners. With this higher level of box office at $1.4 billion and continued network expansion, we anticipate positive flow-through to Adjusted EBITDA margins in 2026, landing in the mid-40s and more specifically at or above 45%. Our brand, industry relationships, technology moat, and executional track record provide us with the confidence that IMAX is leveling up for another record year. A key tenet you've heard repeated throughout today is the increased visibility we have into our future financial drivers coming from three factors. First, greater content diversity, providing both programming optionality and the ability to achieve higher levels of box office even in slower movie-going periods.
Secondly, increased demand by filmmakers and studios for the prime real estate of IMAX windows, driving earlier dating and visibility to future film slates, and third, the committed IMAX system backlog, along with a proven history of replenishment through system signings. Considering these factors, we are providing a three-year outlook for revenue, Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EPS, and free cash flow conversion, reflecting both growth and profitability. For revenues, cumulative average growth of high single-digit to low double digits. This revenue growth will be driven by two inputs: high single-digit to double-digit box office growth and mid-single-digit expansion of the IMAX network. For Adjusted EPS and Adjusted EBITDA margin percent, with revenue outpacing that of costs and expenses, we see margins steadily stepping higher and reaching over 50% Adjusted EBITDA margins by 2028, and Adjusted EPS expanding at twice the rate of that of revenue growth.
For Free Cash Flow Conversion, we see our margin expansion translating to a higher level of operating cash flows and thus Adjusted EBITDA to Free Cash Flow Conversion reaching 50% by next year, 2026, and climbing higher from there. Let's review our long-term targets, starting with revenue growth. Revenue growth is driven by two pillars: network size and IMAX box office, which comes from network size, utilization rates, and ticket prices. As Gio highlighted, we see tremendous global expansion potential with 4,500 possible zones and 1,800 current locations. Our model assumes mid-single-digit annual network growth. This expansion will drive box office growth alongside higher ticket prices and utilization. And while we don't set ticket prices, strong supply demand dynamics for IMAX should naturally push prices higher, especially at our film locations.
On utilization, diverse content programming across our global network and increasing consumer demand for the IMAX experience will flow through to higher attendance levels. Notably, a 100 basis point increase in utilization adds $75 million-$100 million in IMAX box office. Combining network growth, utilization gains, and ticket price increases, this supports our projected IMAX box office average growth through 2028. And while we do not have an in-house view of global box office growth over the next three years, recent estimates from PwC's Entertainment Outlook report show box office growing to almost $37 billion by 2028. Coupled with our modeling, IMAX share of box office could grow by 30% or more. Our business benefits from significant operating leverage reflected in steady growth in adjusted EBITDA margins. With relatively fixed costs, scaling our network and box office drives strong incremental flow-through to the bottom line.
Two key points on this: when annual box office exceeds $1 billion for each incremental IMAX box office dollar above this level, we capture an incremental margin of 85% after factoring in our average of 18% for our revenue take rate. In TPS, network growth delivers strong margin expansion, with gross margins averaging about 50%, boosted by performance of the IMAX leased locations. This positive incrementality, combined with disciplined SG&A growth in the low single digits, positions us to achieve Adjusted EBITDA margins above 50% by 2028. Our path toward 50% free cash flow conversion by 2026 and expanding thereafter is anchored by expanding margins, disciplined capital allocation, and a content strategy that fuels IMAX box office growth, with operating leverage at scale and structural tailwinds in working capital, including improved timing of exhibitor collections and over $250 million of tax attributes that will significantly reduce cash taxes.
We are positioned to drive robust cash generation and enhance long-term shareholder value. Our capital light model and execution have resulted in a strong capital structure. As of September 30th, we held $143 million in cash and $261 million in debt, with a net leverage of 0.7 x. And this year, we strengthened our liquidity and reduced dilution risk through strategic transactions. We renewed and expanded our five-year revolving credit facility to $375 million, adding $75 million of liquidity. And just last month, we refinanced our 2021 convertible notes with $250 million of new notes at a very attractive 0.75% interest rate, only 25 basis points more, while in a much higher interest rate environment than the almost zero in 2021.
Through this transaction, we were able to simultaneously retire over 99% of the prior notes, which we did with cash of $46 million to ensure no dilution. Importantly, we also took out a capped call on the new note, raising the effective conversion price to $57 and, more importantly, protecting our shareholders from dilution up to this level. Together, the cash payment for the outperformance in the old notes and the new capped call equates to approximately $70 million strategically spent to protect our shareholders from potential dilution, and in our view, is akin in some respects to that of a share repurchase. Our strong capital structure gives us the flexibility to meet all of our long-term priorities. First, investing in growth. We currently invest about an average of $35 million annually to expand the IMAX network under joint revenue sharing arrangements.
Given our strong balance sheet and growing free cash flows, we see an opportunity to strategically invest and increase the system-related growth CapEx by 30%-35%, or approximately $10 million-$15 million annually, through new deal structures that accelerate growth in high-return locations, driving future revenues and cash flows. Second, returning excess cash to shareholders. We've returned over $175 million since 2020 and have a strong track record of opportunistic share repurchases, even drawing on our revolving facility to do so when appropriate. The investment case for IMAX is clear and compelling. IMAX is built to outperform as global entertainment evolves. We are capitalizing on our unique tailwinds, leveraging our expansive moat, and demonstrating financial strength that delivers for shareholders. We are entering a new era of growth, and in my 19th year at IMAX, I could not be more excited for what's ahead.
I believe our shareholders should be equally excited about the upside opportunity that IMAX will deliver. Thank you.
Thanks, Natasha, and thanks to all of our presenters today. Also, thanks to the audience, both here in the room and on the live stream, for dedicating time for this event and your attention. We're now, as you can see, going to set up for the Q&A portion of our day. A few things to note on the Q&A. In addition to today's presenters, we're going to have joining us for the Q&A IMAX's Chief Technology Officer, Pablo Calamera. For the Q&A, we ask everyone to wait for us to get you a microphone to ask your questions so those in the live stream can hear as well. Please direct your questions to Rich. He'll be the traffic director up here on the stage.
We also request that you limit yourselves to one question so that we can get to as many people as possible. I'd also note that the management team will be with you at lunch, and so you will have the opportunity to engage with them at that point as well. One minute now. I think we can get the executive team now on the stage. We'll have mic runners on both sides. If you raise your hands, we'll get to you and all kind of point and direct as well. Great. I think I see Eric there with his hand up. We'll get things started.
Hi. Hello? Yeah. Oh. Should be off. Oh, it was off. Is that any better? So it's fully charged. Hello? There we go. There we go.
Third time's the charm.
I was intrigued by, in Gio's presentation, you talked about new deal structures leveraging IMAX liquidity. You already have the JVs where you're putting forth the capital for your partners. You've got a hybrid, and then the exhibitor can purchase outright. So where on that spectrum is there an opportunity for additional liquidity opportunities?
Do you want to answer?
Sure. Am I on? Yep. Yeah, you are. Or not? Nope, not yet. Are we good? Yeah. So in my presentation, Eric, I actually talked about it as well, that we would be up. I think you hear me. Testing. All right. Can you hear me? I talked about increasing our annual investment right now of $35 million by about 30%-35%, another $10 million-$15 million a year.
It would be our JV structure, but doing it in a much larger way in that right now we only contribute the system and in very rare cases a little more than that. But when you think about the balance sheet of the exhibitors in some countries or in specific locations where we feel like there could be a very high return for putting our investment in, where that film rental rate could go higher as well, and you think about a year like 2026 that's ahead of us with $1.4 billion and then continuing to grow from that and growing our market share, that's where you can see that the return on that type of investment by doing the JV model and then putting up for some of the actual capital to build out the actual fit out of the theater itself on top of contributing the system.
In a way, Eric, it's like an imbalance of information because when they're looking at it, they're looking at the model going backwards. We're looking at the model going forward, so the returns are very attractive for us to do that. And at the same token, we're certainly not going to bet our balance sheet on it.
Great. I think I see Mike there.
Hey, guys. Hello. Hey. Congratulations on an incredible year. Great presentation. Thank you, guys, for doing this. Very insightful. I guess the question on Narnia, Rich, you said it was sort of transformative maybe to the industry and to your business. Obviously, we've seen big hits before when Avatar first released and what that did to your business.
Do you see a similar situation here in terms of that being an active catalyst to maybe installations or a new content strategy that could be incremental to your growth opportunity?
I'm going to let Gio give you his reaction when we left the set of Narnia.
Yeah, I told Rich this is going to be a game changer for our business. And look, of course, it's impossible to predict in detail, but we definitely see it as a catalyst. And I was trying to convey that there have been some pivotal points in next year with titles like The Odyssey, but then I focused particularly on Narnia. I think that will be a game changer. Think about exhibitors, cinema operators that can have access to certain types of content, overperforming content through an IMAX venue.
You obviously want more of those venues, and we want more of them as quickly as possible.
So Mike, I don't know if any of you guys realize this, but right across the street, the old Spruce Goose hangar, which is now Google's big office here, Jim Cameron rented it to do a film called Avatar 1. And he invited me pretty early in the process, and he put up one of those screens that you show the slides of your kids growing up, and he showed me like, I don't know, 15 minutes of Avatar. And I called back some of my colleagues in New York, and I said, "We're going to be in a different business when that movie came out." And I definitely have the same feeling about this.
And again, I don't really right now want to talk about the financial model, but I think the way IMAX could evolve in that ecosystem, such as things like earlier release windows or different distribution patterns. I think we do think it could have a similar effect.
Great. Thanks, Mike. I think next question there with Omar.
Hey, guys. Can you hear me?
Yep.
Well, thanks for the presentation. Jonathan, or maybe Natasha, you talked about implementing the dual programming strategy to drive capacity utilization. Can you elaborate a bit on the expected changes from this new strategy and the potential impact on capacity utilization and the flow through to the bottom line and how that plays a role in the new guidance, obviously, in the mid-40s and the long-term three-year guidance of north of 50%?
Jonathan, why don't you just talk about the strategy, and then Natasha, you could talk about the financial impact.
Sure. So thanks, Omar. Look, I think the opportunity for us is really to be as flexible and nimble as possible. So we will, as you heard, FFI is a key part of building our slate, and that does go hand in hand with an exclusive window on those titles. But where we see real opportunities as well, we started in a meaningful way last Thanksgiving and had our most successful Thanksgiving ever when we were programming Gladiator, Wicked, and Moana. And then this year, as you've heard, we beat that by 70% in programming Zootopia and Wicked: For Good. So I think the opportunity we see is to be nimble and to find the right mix. So we will be doing a combination.
We'll continue to lean into exclusive windows, but where there are those either non-FFI periods or real opportunities to maximize revenue, we'll do that as well.
And I think, is it working? I think, Omar, what you've seen this year alone is the fact that that strategy is working tremendously for us. And when you think about where we are year to date of being up 34% globally versus where domestic is just at 1% year to date, that's a big difference. And that comes from that programming agility that Jonathan is talking about in making sure that globally, across our footprint, we are playing, whether it be in Indonesia playing an Indonesian title or in Poland playing a Polish title, and then here in North America playing a Hollywood title.
That's what's adding up to that box office and gives us the confidence to even go out with our guidance of 1.4 for next year.
One thing we didn't spend a lot of time talking about during the presentation was the use of analytics, including AI. So Hollywood has talked a lot about the gut. We've kind of had it with the gut. And one reason Heather was brought in was to use good, hard data to increase that capacity utilization. So Heather, maybe you want to address kind of what you think the opportunity is?
Yeah, absolutely. Natasha, can I borrow your mic maybe? Hello? Perfect. Yes. So in terms of increasing capacity utilization, we know that the demand not only just to see a certain film, but to see it in IMAX is stronger than ever. When we've gotten data from our exhibitor partners to look at our capacity utilization in their auditoriums, we know that it's been increasing from pre-pandemic to current when you compare both weekdays and weekends. We are already seeing this type of programming strategy increasing our capacity and fill rates in the auditoriums. It's simply because, as I mentioned, consumers want more variety of their films, and they want to see them in IMAX. The more films and more events and more content we can play, we can keep the same people coming to the theater multiple times or capitalize on different demographics and psychographic groups.
We'll add in there a little bit too. Actually, I'll just say that we've talked a little bit in a few of the sessions too about data. Data is a place that we've actually invested quite a bit. While the data may be has been there in the past, I think with Jonathan and Heather here actually surfacing that data to make more data-informed decisions on the programming was a major shift. And I've seen it here. I've been here six years. But it's changed quite a bit already. And it was largely driven a lot by the talent, but also the data systems that have evolved quite a bit in that time. And AI will be a part of that as well.
Thank you. Just to follow up on that last question, do you see a place in other markets besides China for dynamic allocation of screens like they do in China, where if it does well on Thursday and Friday, they get more share of the screens if you're going to balance two titles in a weekend?
Jonathan or? Thanks.
Yeah, that is something we're already leaning into. So as we talked about, we are starting to do more FFI titles in local language as well. But we've grown the local language volume. We will have 68 titles this year. Next year, we're going to grow that by, let's call it, 15% plus or minus . And part of that gives us the opportunity to be flexible to schedule within and around Hollywood titles that are working. So we're already doing that. And I think as we grow that volume of local language, we'll be able to increase that flexibility in local territories as well.
One thing you might be surprised about is the studio's willingness, even with exclusive windows, to carve out some room for local language. So as you know, Japan has a very different distribution pattern than the rest of the world. And you'll find this a little shocking, but even Disney has been very open-minded about carving out time for local language films. So we should shout that out that our studio partners have been just much more flexible, which helps a lot in expanding the China model elsewhere.
Maybe Daniel, talk a little bit about the success in China last Chinese New Year with that.
Yeah, happy to. So during Chinese New Year on any given year, we're programming four to five films at a time. We've continued that strategy actually through other windows throughout the year. We do that for a number of reasons. One, sometimes you don't know which film is going to break out. You may have one or two that you think have a really high possibility, but it enables us to really capture whichever film truly is going to break out.
More importantly, China is a big country, and a lot of films play differently in different territories. So we often find ourselves in positions where we're programming one local language title for the South for a genre that works really well there. And at the same time, we're playing another film that works much better in the North, capturing more box office and more market share as a whole. So it's a program that has worked for us really, really well in that territory.
Right there. Next question.
Thank you. It's David Joyce of the Seaport. It's great to see the continued volume-based momentum in growing the network and taking more share at the box office and the operating leverage that emanates from that. But what might the opportunities be on the pricing side? Your take rate has been pretty static for a long time.
What's your philosophy on that, either from your desire to try to increase your take rate or your contractual ability, given the demand for more and more exhibitors wanting to add your screens?
We have a fairly strong point of view on that question, which is that you really want to be part of this ecosystem and the team. And pushing big studios, especially when the number is shrinking on higher take rates, is probably not a great way to live a really long life. So we've tried to use our leverage in different ways, such as what Anne was talking about, the marketing. And maybe Anne, you'll follow on for a second and just talk about what we've been able to get. But we've been able to use our leverage in very significant ways without playing with kind of the Holy Grail, which is the take rate.
Anne, before you do the marketing, Daniel, though, has actually had some success in China in pushing the take rates because the dynamic is a little bit different. Explain that. The last point I'll add is we can't set the prices. The exhibitors do. I think there is opportunity on the pricing side. We could have discussions that are well within the boundaries of the antitrust regulations in doing that. I'll give you a very simple example. The exhibitors don't charge more for film than they do for digital. They're sold out months in advance. If I were pricing, I would think that would be a pretty good opportunity. That's where there are more opportunities than on the split. Daniel, why don't you talk about that for a second?
So very recently, actually, we've closed two deals in China where our take rate has gone up significantly. It's not something that we've publicly disclosed in the numbers, but it's a trajectory towards, I think, an area where we have a little more flexibility, and we can play a little bit more of a role in that. Also, I think it's important to note on our local language titles in China, our take rate is higher just by nature of those contracts. So I'll turn it over to Ann to talk about some of the other ways in which we're leveraging that. But I do see for that region in particular, there may be some growth potential there.
Yeah, I think what Rich is talking about is we just have a totally unique, deep partnership with these studios, and that is how we've been able to really create these great events. The results have been clear. So they have taken the approach of really integrating us into the marketing, of course, with our working very closely with them to get those campaigns up and out around the world. But we've seen a big win for both parties and our filmmakers as well, right, with increased indexing, increased opening weekends, general increase at the box office, and more fans coming into the ecosystem so then we can remarket to them, whether it's for a big studio release or alt content or a music event that just keeps bringing more and more people back to IMAX, and everyone benefits. So that has been the approach, and it has been working.
We didn't go into detail on the context of that countdown for The Mandalorian, but it's kind of incredible how it came about. But Disney came to us and said, "We're distributing Avatar, and Mandalorian is a big film for us next year. So could we design a special piece to market The Mandalorian, given how many eyes will watch Avatar?" And that thing cost a fortune to put together and to distribute. And that was their initiative and none of our costs. So rather than playing around with take rates, those are a lot of the opportunities.
Thank you for all the insights. There you go. Okay. Thank you for all the insights. Just quickly, building on Mark's presentation, going forward, do you change your IP strategy at all in terms of all these innovations, these new products, these new capabilities you're doing for the directors? Does that increase your patent portfolio or so forth?
Yeah, I'll touch on that a little bit. So I mean, we do have a pretty there are some things that we are having as just trade secret because things that are patented are obviously fully disclosed, and reverse engineering is not that hard. We do have a pretty, I'll say, strategic patent plan for things that we do patent and things that we decide to just keep trade secret. So it is balanced.
Great. Another question? All right.
If there are no further questions, I'll just say a few words. But after I'm done, we have a really nice courtyard on a nice day in California to where we can sit outside. And we arranged the tables, so you'll have the opportunity to sit with members of management you might be interested in too.
So if China is your particular interest, you could spend more time with Daniel. And Natasha, I'm sure, will be overwhelmed with questions. And then you can move around a little bit. So we'll be available to follow up on that. I hope we accomplished our objective today, which was, as I said at the beginning, to really show you there's been a complete reset in the IMAX business. And as I said, the other part of the objective is I think Natasha, Jen, and I are people who meet with you all a lot, but there are a lot of talented people behind the scenes. So I was also, when I was sitting there, thinking Mark's been here 29 years. Natasha's been here 19 years. Gio's been here 13 years. It's not a Johnny-come-lately team. We've been around a lot of time.
And I think one of the last questions about leverage, I think you don't want to really talk about that that much because not a thing your counterparties enjoy hearing about. But given the relationships we have with the filmmakers and the exhibitors and our place in the ecosystem, and I'm sure you guys have read some of the press that says a lot of the filmmakers really insist that their movies be made in IMAX. So it's really put us in a unique and a very good place. And it turned out that this was the perfect time to lay all that in front of you. And we're grateful for you coming, and we're grateful for your support. And we love to reward people who believe in us. So thank you, and we're happy to continue this outside.