Disney is surely pleased that over the weekend, a seven-year-old film – the re-release of “Avengers Endgame: Encore” became the No. 1 film in America, grossing $26 million. But it’s the number really excited about $13.5 million, which is what “Endgame: Encore” grossed on Infinity Vision screens.
As a reminder, “Infinity Vision” is the new brand that Disney has granted to cinema screens that it deems to meet its own audio and visual standards. It is not a specific format, nor necessarily a so-called Premium Large Format (PLF) screen, and it is certainly not IMAX. The only reason Infinity Vision exists is because “Avengers: Doomsday” won’t be hitting IMAX screens when it opens on December 18. Those are reserved for “Dune: Part Three,” which opens the same day and was shot on IMAX cameras, giving Arrakis dibs on Disney and Marvel’s latest superhero extravaganza.
So Disney wants to lay the groundwork for “Doomsday” by establishing the idea that Infinity Vision is still something special, that it’s still an event worth leaving the house to see a movie for, and that it’s not “less than” IMAX (although the powers that be at IMAX and Denis Villeneuve would disagree). That’s part of the idea behind creating “Avengers Endgame: Encore,” the first film Disney released in Infinity Vision before banking everything on its biggest release of the year with “Avengers: Doomsday.”
“Endgame: Encore” was released on more than 3,000 screens and more than 1,300 of them ended up being certified to Infinity Vision standards. This means that people who purchased tickets for “Endgame: Encore” all saw the Infinity Vision logo next to the show time and chose that theater and time over another option. The $13.5 million generated by these screens represented 52 percent of the box office on just 43 percent of screens.
These ratios may seem obvious; about half the money coming from just under half the screens. But if you ask Disney, these numbers are exactly what they want to see and prove that branding will have an impact when “Doomsday” opens. There are also signs that they can and will continue to roll this out for potentially another film (no other films are currently planned to open in Infinity Vision).
“I think we’re all going to learn more about this,” Andrew Cripps, Disney’s head of theatrical distribution, told IndieWire. “This is the first time that Infinity Vision is being released. We have marketed it and our exhibitor partners are very involved in this project. If you go to the ticketing sites, there are Infinity Vision banners on them. We have set up an Infinity Vision website with frequently asked questions so that people can understand. But as you know, it takes time to launch a brand and a new concept. I hope that with time, people will become familiar with it and seek out Infinity Cinemas Vision.”
Part of Infinity Vision’s strategy was to make these tickets available for pre-sale before all the standard tickets went on sale, so that core fans who want to see the film as soon as possible also do so knowing that they are choosing higher quality screens. This early access also encourages operators to have their screens certified. To that end, Cripps says at least two circuits are making active efforts to upgrade their screens to become Infinity Vision certified, including several Cinemark screens in Latin America that are working to upgrade their theaters to Dolby 7.1 audio.
As for what that means for “Doomsday,” IndieWire previously reported that much of the $50 million already brought in via presales has been on Infinity Vision screens, and that split currently represents 73% of all “Doomsday” presales. “Endgame: Encore” even had a few IMAX screens that “Doomsday” wouldn’t have, so the spread for Infinity Vision on “Doomsday,” although on many more screens, might even be bigger than what it brought in for “Endgame: Encore.”
“We want these early audiences to see the film in the best possible environment, and them grabbing the biggest and best screens is a very positive thing,” Cripps said.
It’s also worth noting that many of these Infinity Vision displays don’t come with an added extra. Disney does not dictate these prices, it is only an additional charge if the operator has already classified it among its PLF screens. Infinity Vision isn’t anti-IMAX either, despite what might have seemed like a direct response to them, but several Disney titles for next year are already confirmed for IMAX releases. So this is simply a designation that Disney considers these screens to live up to, and the hope for Disney is that exhibitors will continue to play ball with other tentpole releases and perhaps even other studios will decide to build on the branding if it proves successful.
“Long-term expectations continue to evolve,” Cripps said. “We will learn with every release we have. We are doing a thorough analysis of all our markets around the world and our exhibiting partners, and we will get to a good place with all of this.”
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