SEATTLE, Wash. — “Why isn’t the Boeing IMAX showing ‘The Odyssey?’”
If you’re a local cinephile, that question has probably been at the top of your mind for some time now.
With the Space Needle corporation taking over the biggest IMAX screen in Washington back in February, many have been left in the dark about what happened -- and what’s actually going on.
While film groups across Seattle put out statements pushing the newly rebranded single-screen theater to reconsider playing feature films, the current theater employees just want everyone to take a moment to relax and take a deep breath.
Ella Halvorson Gould, a former theater host at the Pacific Science Center’s rendition of the Boeing IMAX theater, is the only worker who was asked to return after most employees were let go.
Now a flex staff member at IMAX at the Center, Halvorson Gould said prior to the transition, outside of the big tentpole films of the year, ticket sales were far from ideal.
“We would have no shows often, pretty much all the time,” Halvorson Gould said. “Every day, we would have so many people here, and nobody to watch the documentaries, seldom people to watch the feature films.”
This period of poor sales tracks with PacSci’s sale of roughly 25% of its grounds, reported earlier this year in the Seattle Times.
“A lot of the Reddit people are upset that we don’t show feature films, but the thing is, a Christopher Nolan movie every four years does not support a movie theater,” Halvorson Gould added.
It’s true -- Seattle theaters have been struggling for years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. As rents increase and media consumption habits change, local theaters struggle to stay around, or worse, shut down.
The beloved icons we still have are then faced with an adapt-or-die mentality.
Now, with IMAX at the Center, documentary screenings of “Deep Sky” and Chihuly’s “Roll the Dice” are included in a Space Needle, Chihuly, or combo Space Needle and Chihuly ticket.
Halvorson Gould noted a serious increase in attendance, with hundreds of people attending daily.
What’s happening currently may not please the greater Seattle film community, but to IMAX at the Center, it’s a step in a profitable direction.
“So many people in Seattle have had some of the best movie experiences they’ve had in this theater. And I think what we, here at IMAX at the Center, want people to know, is that we’re not trying to take away from that,” Halvorson Gould said. “We understand their frustration, and we’re also movie lovers. We spend all day talking about movies here. We all love movies.”
While feature films aren’t necessarily out of the question, it’s not necessarily in the plans for the rest of the summer.
Halvorson Gould and team all noted they would love to see them come back, but for now, they urge people to be thankful that it’s not closed, or worse, destroyed.
“They left a bouquet of flowers outside our sign with a sign that says, 'R.I.P. Boeing IMAX Theater.’ I’m like, ‘Well, that’s not entirely fair, because it’s not like they demolished the building,’" Halvorson Gould said.
KIRO 7 reached out to the Space Needle for comment on several occasions. They declined each time to comment.
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