Why Is Inhumans In IMAX? Let The Director Explain

Marvel is developing an Inhumans TV show for ABC. Okay, that makes sense. Agents of SHIELD is four seasons deep and introduces the Inhumans last season with the Secret Warriors. DC has like six thousand shows on network TV. But when it was announced the first two episodes of the series would premiere in IMAX theaters … every Marvel fan’s face was like:

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So at SDCC, we sat down with IMAX Entertainment CEO Greg Foster, who said the Inhumans IMAX special, which he calls “Cinematic Television,” happened for a pretty simple reason initially.

“The movie, the television show, whatever you want to call it, we call it cinematic television, it's the case for a pretty simple reason initially, which is the material,” he said. “The lineage lends itself, but we also have a great relationship with our fans through Marvel. Five of the top ten IMAX global releases of all time have been Marvel.”

“The second reason is that studios simply don’t release big tentpole blockbuster movies for about 10 weeks a year,” Foster said, naming the gaps in IMAX releases. “They don’t happen from the middle of August until the middle of September, Halloween weekend, the first two weekends of December, the end of April, and Super Bowl weekend. It’s our job at IMAX to create 52 weeks of compelling content.”

Foster also said IMAX has a connotation to only developing a certain type of program. For example, there are no romantic comedies and many genres are left out. This is another reason for getting involved with Inhumans, which Director Roel Reiné called '"80 percent drama." It’s a first for a TV series to partner with IMAX.

“This is an innovative new strategy with something that isn't’ a movie but also isn’t your traditional television program. They were very focused on bringing IMAX fans to ABC. This kind of program lends itself to what we do, that was the whole genesis of it,” Reiné said.

Reiné also thanks IMAX for creating a brand new lens just for Inhumans. When he asked, Foster obliged.

“I was doing a test and the widest lens they had, I was looking at it like, that's not wide enough. We have scenes in caves and mines and I want to be really low angle so I asked them to create an even wider lens,” Reiné said. “They were really surprised but they created one in London that was perfectly fit for the format, a non fisheye, 5 millimeter lens.”

Reiné revealed there will be differences between the IMAX version and the TV version, which gives us more of a reason to go see the Inhumans in theatres. The Inhumans takes place on both Earth and the Moon, where the home city of Attilan rests. He said the scope is going to be huge, and teased HBO’s Westworld. There’s also a full CGI, two thousand pound teleporting dog, which Reiné says has never been done before on television. Not to mention, Lockjaw is also in IMAX quality.

“We designed the sets to have scope in IMAX format. The sets are high and tall so you can fill the IMAX perspective. The question becomes how to balance that. There are shots in the IMAX version that are not in the ABC version so we changed the wider shots with the tighter shots to get a different feel,” Reiné said. “In IMAX, when you see a big close up with Black Bolt thinking and feeling, it's really powerful.”

Inhumans arrives in IMAX September 1.