The Murder Of The Boeing IMAX Theater

The Pacific Northwest’s one “true” IMAX screen is dead. Round up the suspects.

It’s been a long day without you, my friend And I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again

This past spring, a vicious attack occurred in Seattle Center. It happened in the dead of night, under cover of darkness. The victim was the Boeing IMAX Theater, a cinema screen in Seattle, Washington boasting one of the best movie watching experiences in the nation. She was 60 feet tall, 80 feet wide, and the closest I believe I’ll ever experience to a religious gathering place. The scale of this screen is something to truly behold . Just to enter, you have to descend 24 feet underground down a spiral walkway — losing cell signal and feeling the pressure in your eardrums change. Once inside, you are encased in a chamber of light and sound. A one way mirror into the artistic subconscious of the world.

But this past month, it was confirmed that Seattle area movie goers would be losing this world class experience. The theater was previously operated by the Pacific Science Center, a science museum that has resided in the space for 50 years — but was recently sold to the adjacent Space Needle, who technically owned the land that the theater resided upon.

The Needle stabbed this city in the back.

At first, the sale seemed to be a temporary disruption of services. The space was closed for some renovations, but many (myself included) assumed it was some short term maintenance ahead of the summer season. But this past week, confirmation of the worst hit email inboxes.

Thank you to Chase Hutchinson for bearing the bad news.

The ownership change would bring with it a name change — now IMAX at the Center. As well as a new programming policy that will not show feature film programming, and instead focus on hour long documentary presentations that will be sold to Space Needle guests as a ticket upsell.

The Boeing IMAX Theater was dead. So now, like any good cinematic detective — I find myself left with nothing but a corkboard of suspects and a spool of red string to try and keep track of the truth.

this is what mentally healthy people do when a business closes

Suspect #1: Dale Chihuly

Pictured, something that apparently qualifies as art.

In every murder mystery, there’s always one perfect suspect. The early mark who you want to blame for the crime, because they’ve already pissed you off so many times. For most people in Seattle with artistic taste, that role goes to Dale Chihuly.

If you’ve never visited the Seattle Center, you may be unfamiliar with the works of Dale Chihuly (or rather, his interns’ work). Chihuly is a brand of glass art with a flagship museum in the shadow of the Space Needle. Chihuly Garden and Glass is a common upsell to Space Needle visitors — a completely unmemorable walkthrough of glass sculptures, frequently serving as a wedding venue or corporate picnic spot. It is the platonic ideal of commercial art — visually stimulating, while offering absolutely nothing to the human imagination. To experience a Chihuly is to go “huh, neat” and keep walking. You will be charged $60 for the experience, and an extra $2000 on the way out if you want to take a piece home with you.

When you want to spend a car payment on an ashtray, Choose Chihuly

Chihuly is big business, and is as much a part of the IMAX acquisition deal as the Space Needle. Their primary business model is up selling the museum to tourists, who have suddenly realized that Seattle’s most iconic landmark has only taken up 45 minutes of their afternoon.

While unconfirmed, a part of the rumored programming for the “IMAX at the Center” is a Dale Chihuly documentary that will screen daily, alongside a truncated version of the space doc Deep Sky. This is where you can see the Space Needle’s long term business plan take shape. Rather than selling tickets to two or three screenings a day of blockbuster movies, they can now sell potentially dozens of tickets to tourists as they file out of the Needle and look for a second activity. With a shorter turnaround time, each seat suddenly becomes more valuable.

But like any murder mystery, the first suspect always has an iron clad alibi.

In this case, it is that Dave Chihuly would in no way put in the work necessary to kill a movie theater.

This is a man whose current artistic contribution to the world is made of picking out glass swatches, scribbling on an easel with crayon, and then picking which of his interns’ glass art got closest to what he was thinking of. He is the art world equivalent of an “ideas man”, the hypothetical job at every video game studio held by a millionaire idiot who suggests things like “a game that’s like Grand Theft Auto but a Kung Fu Movie”, and then fires whoever doesn’t appeal to his vague suggestions.

Dale Chihuly sucks, but he also has very little to do with the foundation in his name. Even if the Boeing IMAX theater becomes a tomb to his everlasting mediocrity, he is not truly to blame for this cruel fate.

The foundation in his name, however…

Suspect # 2 Ron Sevart — CEO of the Space Needle and Chihuly Garden And Glass

It may surprise you to learn that the Space Needle and this ostentatious glass bullshit museum are owned by the same people. A joint company, who is run by a CEO by the name of Ron Sevart. So far, Ron is one of the few to go on record regarding his company’s recent purchase.

If Ron is to be believed, his company is effectively clueless as to what they have just purchased. In an interview with The Stranger, Sevart made his intentions very clear.

“We weren’t looking to operate a theater,”

Says the man who recently purchased one of the most valuable movie theaters in the Continental United States.

Sevart goes on to vaguely promise future “content” that will be shown on the screen. This line fits with the rumored Chihuly Doc and edited Deep Sky presentation. If the goal is to use the screen as a tourist attraction, move people through the seats, and juice the crowds — content’s the word.

The move is pretty clear when you view the Space Needle’s business model. Buying a Space Needle ticket is a series of upsells. Pay more for a better time, for a trip to Chihuly, to a meal at the “restaurant" (that has no kitchen), and now to an hour long documentary about space. It makes some sense as a tourist play, and I understand Sevant’s logic here. Mix that with a (likely non-existent) inflow of World Cup tourists, and you can see how this adds up financially.

From the hours of 8am to 6pm, when weather allows. The Needle is a global icon, but also a fairly shit tourist attraction when clouds or fog impact the view. I’ve lived in this city for eight years, and historically there’s a 3/8th chance the Space Needle’s annual NYE fireworks show gets cancelled due to weather issues.

So perhaps it’s worth investing in Boeing not just as a complimentary service to one tourist attraction, but as a local attraction with regional pull.

IMAX is big business, and fans are hungry to see these major films on the biggest screen possible. With The Odyssey boating a full runtime of native IMAX footage, the audience investment in this format has never been higher. Cinephiles are a growing demographic, and they seek out boutique experiences that IMAX at the Center could provide.

As the only 1:43:1 ratio digital IMAX in the Pacific Northwest, local tourists (who aren’t impacted by Trump’s chaotic border policies) have reasons to visit — and a lot of them. This year, The Odyssey and Dune: Part 3 will make world class use of the tech — further growing the market. Audiences are excited by premium large format options, and are willing to travel for the best. Give them a reason to come to Seattle.

Showtimes could even be limited to non-peak Space Needle attendance hours, allowing for flexible schedule options. The magic of a screen is that it can play anything — and by all accounts, the improvements already made to the space would be welcomed by cinema fans with open arms.

So in the case of Ron Sevart, the crime perhaps has not yet been committed. An incredible Seattle icon rests in your hands, Mr. Sevart. The pulse is still, but not gone. I hope you can make this city proud.

But the fact is, we also must ask — who put the Boeing in this lifeless state to begin with?

Suspect #3: The Pacific Science Center

With the most likely suspects cleared of wrongdoing, eyes inevitably turn to the grieving widow. For 50 years, the Pacific Science Center has been part of the Seattle landscape. The iconic Yamaski arches are always seen in triplicate with the Space Needle and the Key Arena/Climate Pledge Area roof. It’s a children’s science facility that has diligently served the area for many years.

It’s also a pretty shit museum.

just look at all that… nothing

For a lot of Seattle locals, this might feel like blasphemy. This is an iconic field trip destination, one of those places that looms large in the memory of a child. However, as a girl who was raised in Portland with the far superior OMSI, Pac Sci has only ever existed in my eyes as a slowly drying lake bed filled with stone dinosaurs. Besides the Butterfly house (which is quite lovely!), every exhibit feels twenty years out of date. A lack of sponsorship and general funding has kept it on life support for years, and recently they’ve even had to sell their iconic dinosaur animatronics to keep the lights on.

Coming Soon to a hipster bar near you

When attending a movie at the Boeing IMAX theater, guests would be enthusiastically praised for helping to fund local science education. The implication has always been that the IMAX theater worked as a revenue stream for the museum, but recent revelations have thrown that understanding on its head.

Based on publicly available tax info, it appears that the Pacific Science Center was effectively operating the Boeing IMAX at a loss — meaning that donors who had been pledging money for science education may have ended up funding an unprofitable movie theater (an equally noble cause, but not the one they signed up for).

So now, we must look at the death of the Boeing IMAX as less of a crime of greed, but rather as one of negligence. After all, there’s currently no bigger name in cinema than IMAX. It’s the most well known brand in “Premium Large Format” presentation of blockbuster films, with filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, Ryan Coogler, and Denis Villenue staking their claim on it as the ultimate in theatrical presentation.

Films like Sinners, Oppenheimer, and Project Hail Mary have been selling out premium IMAX venues so quickly that in LA & NYC they’ve become luxury commodities akin to major concert tours. 70MM tickets for The Odyssey went on sale a full year in advance.

How could it possibly be unprofitable to run an IMAX movie theater in 2025?

Suspect #4: The IMAX Corporation

The thing to know about IMAX is that it isn’t really just one format. You wouldn’t be blamed for thinking that IMAX is as binary a choice at the movies as seeing something in 3D, or viewing a movie in color rather than black & white. But in reality, the word “IMAX” means a lot of different things depending on which theater you’re seated in.

What about this don’t you understane?!?

The loss of the Boeing IMAX theater will hurt for many reasons, but perhaps none will hit harder than the fact it is happening mere months before the release of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey — which is the first feature film to ever be recorded entirely on IMAX film cameras in a 1.43:1 aspect ratio. The Boeing IMAX theater was the only screen in the entire Pacific Northwest capable of displaying this full image. If you want to see The Odyssey as “Christopher Nolan intended it to be seen”, your best option is to now hop on a train to Los Angeles.

Or if you’re willing to settle for a cropped version of the image, you could cross the Pac Sci courtyard and see it at the PACCAR IMAX Theater.

It sure is a science center IMAX screen. Would be great for a Dale Chihuly documentary.

Or hop on the light rail and see it in IMAX at the Westlake IMAX, or the Alderwood IMAX. Which really, is probably how the IMAX corporation would prefer for it to go.

For the past twenty years, IMAX has profited off of the confusion around what exactly their own product is. People know it’s BIGGER, and for a long time that was enough. As theaters have struggled to attract audiences in the streaming age, IMAX’s promise of larger-than-life spectacle has been a consistent hit. But while “BIGGER” is an attractive selling point to audiences, it’s also an expensive thing to actually deliver.

Traditional multiplex theaters often don’t have the space required to fit a “properly sized” IMAX screen. Ones that do often require that screen to be on an entirely separate floor of the building, taking up an obscene amount of real estate.

it’s like you’re watching a movie hanging from lady libertie’s nips

So while audiences want bigger, theater owners would prefer something more manageable. Enter the dreaded “LieMAX”.

If you’ve never heard this term before, congratulations — you hang around far more tolerable human beings than I. “LieMAX” has been the go-to insult for ‘digital IMAX’ projection seen at most chain theaters. If your local multiplex has ever converted a screen to IMAX, it’s likely a digital IMAX screen. These are still larger than the typical cinema screen, and have a certain quality of sound to them… but are not going to come close to the sort of larger-than-life spectacle witnessed on a proper IMAX display.

When the Pacific Science Center realized they needed to offload the Boeing IMAX Theater, the Space Needle was not their first choice of buyer. According to reports, multiple options were pursued — and it is hard to imagine the dedicated team not fighting to the very end, trying to keep this beloved institution available for PNW movie fans. So, why didn’t an existing theater company rush in to utilize this incredible screen? With IMAX film booming, why was the purchase untenable?

The answer is simple and annoying. Licensing agreements.

One would want to believe that running a movie theater is as simple as owning a screen, selecting what to play, and selling tickets to the show. But often the agreements to play feature films are far more complicated than this, especially for venues with a single screen.

Paying for the IMAX licence means giving up a cut of ticket sales not just to the studio who produced the film, but to IMAX themselves. While IMAX may be the biggest name in cinema at the moment, they don’t actually own any of the cinemas that they operate. The company profits by licensing the name and technology to individual theater owners, as well as leases on equipment to play the films.

IMAX takes a cut of every ticket sale, while diluting the brand with mediocre product. They’ve created an environment that is difficult enough to survive in. Fortunately, the movie business is full of rational, level headed people.

Suspect Number #5 — The Walt Disney Corporation

IMAX licencing fees often aren’t the only requirement. For major movie studios, running films come with a minimum run agreement. This means that if you run the picture, it’s going to be played at your location for a minimum of x days. That’s an easy enough problem for a multiplex to solve — they’ve got plenty of screens, and can just punt an underperforming studio tentpole to a smaller auditorium with less seats. But for single screen movie theaters, the deal has already been struck.

This exact issue led to the closure of the Seattle Cinerama back in 2020 (pre-COVID lockdown). Cinerama employees cited problematic agreements with the Walt Disney company — where in order to secure hotly anticipated movies like Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (I know, at a time people were excited to see it. Wild.) — the theater had to also commit to playing Dumbo for multiple weekends. This locked Cinerama out of other movies that may have sold more tickets than Disney’s offering, contributing to an attendance crisis.

Fortunately, the screen was required by SIFF last year — rebranded as SIFF Downtown. Which must be having a thrilling weekend, with both Obsession and Backrooms drawing in the exact sort of cinematically engaged audiences excited to see it with a big crowd in a proper movie house — let’s get tickets!

GOD FUCKING DAMN IT

There have been rumors about SIFF’s viability following a few down years for the festival. I cannot imagine the burden of Baby Yoda’s Flop Era is helping. Disney’s position in the market over the past few years can best be described as a prom queen who we can’t stop electing to the position, but who nobody can tolerate anymore. Her power is relentless, unreliable, and totemic. She holds the keys to so many franchises, IP, and memories. It’s becoming clear that all of them have limited appeal — as everything from Snow White to Star Wars falls flat with audiences. Yet they still have enormous hits, and the potential for world-changing ones. You cannot afford to ignore them.

Suffice to say, you can understand why Ron Sevart may be hesitant to start running a movie theater. For all my words about “Just play docs during tourist hours”, the regulations held by major media companies are insane — and their grasp is only getting tighter.

Oh good, this will surely make things less complicated.

Further complicating matters is Disney’s recent intention to launch a PLF labeling system for Avengers: Doomsday, specifically to direct audiences to IMAX alternatives — since Dune will be occupying the other screens. It feels like a shot across the bow — if Disney declares independence from IMAX, where is IMAX in ten years? Yet also, where will Disney be in ten years? Will both of them be Netflix? Will all of them be owned by Dale Chihuly?

In Conclusion

The Boeing IMAX Theater is not yet dead. It has been murdered in name, but the body simply lays still. She is a machine of light, sound, and dreams. All I ask is that we play dreams that let the soul breathe. Let us ask questions about the universe. Let us engage with stories old as time. Let us live second lives beyond the stars.

Also Dune: Part 3 is out this year and my man, you REALLY gotta see how big those worms are on that screen. You will NOT believe it, Ron.

Yes Ron, I hope you’re reading this. You’re a CEO, you gotta have a Google Alert set up for your own name. No shame! I do it too!