---
title: "Only Five Theaters in Southern California Can Show 'The Odyssey' in IMAX 70mm. Here's Why"
description: "Taylor Umphenour, who helped retrofit the Alex Theater in Glendale, explains what the format actually is: 70mm film turned on its side and run horizontally, at roughly three times the frame area. The scarcity is a projection problem, not a marketing one."
category: "Entertainment"
category_url: https://herald.la/category/entertainment
author: "Tyler Grant"
published: 2026-07-31T19:55:20.000Z
updated: 2026-07-31T19:55:20.000Z
canonical: https://herald.la/article/only-five-theaters-in-southern-california-can-show-the-odyssey-in-imax-70mm-here
tags: ["film", "imax", "70mm", "movie-theaters", "los-angeles"]
---
# Only Five Theaters in Southern California Can Show 'The Odyssey' in IMAX 70mm. Here's Why

Taylor Umphenour, who helped retrofit the Alex Theater in Glendale, explains what the format actually is: 70mm film turned on its side and run horizontally, at roughly three times the frame area. The scarcity is a projection problem, not a marketing one.

There are two separate things being called "film" in the marketing around "The
Odyssey," and the difference between them is the reason your ticket options look
the way they do.

Taylor Umphenour, described by
[LAist as one of Los Angeles's top IMAX projectionists](https://laist.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/la-projectionist-breaks-70mm-imax-the-odyssey)
and one of the people who helped retrofit the Alex Theater in Glendale, gives the
mechanical version, which is clearer than most of the marketing.

## What IMAX 70mm actually is

"What IMAX did was they took 70mm film, which runs vertically through the
projector, and they turned it on its side, and then they repeated it over three
times," Umphenour said.

That is the whole trick. Ordinary 70mm film travels through a projector the way
35mm does, top to bottom, one frame after another. IMAX runs the same width of
film sideways, so each frame occupies about three times the area. The image is not
being enlarged; there is simply more negative holding it.

"When you increase the size of the film, you increase that clarity and that
sharpness," he said, "because you're allowing the emulsion to contain all that
information, but you're giving it a wider image area to hold it."

The consequence people notice in the room is shape rather than sharpness. A
widescreen image spreads sideways. IMAX's frame is proportionally much taller.
"Widescreen fills your field of vision left to right," Umphenour said. "But what
IMAX does, it takes that even further and it fills your field of vision all the way
to the top and all the way to the bottom."

## Where you can actually see it

For "The Odyssey," five theaters in Southern California can run IMAX 70mm: the TCL
Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Regal Irvine Spectrum, Regal LA Live, Regal Edwards
Ontario Palace and the Universal Cinema AMC at CityWalk.

The Alex Theater in Glendale is showing the standard 70mm version, which is a
different and also increasingly rare thing.

That is the list. Everything else in the region showing the film is showing a
digital presentation, including auditoriums branded as IMAX, which use digital
projectors rather than running film.

## Why the number is five and not fifty

The constraint is physical. Running film at this scale requires a projector that
almost nobody manufactures anymore, a booth with room for it, and a person who
knows how to thread and maintain it. Prints are heavy, mechanically fragile, and
have to be handled by someone who has done it before.

Digital projection removed all of that, which is why it won. A digital
presentation needs no projectionist in the booth for each show and no print to
ship, inspect and repair. The theaters that kept the film equipment did so as a
deliberate choice, usually because a particular filmmaker's audiences kept turning
up for it.

Which makes the projectionist the actual bottleneck. The equipment can be
maintained if someone knows how; the knowledge is the scarce part, and it is held
by a small number of people, several of whom are in Los Angeles because this is
where the demand for it survived.

## A note on what you are buying

The word IMAX on a ticket does not tell you which of these you are getting. If the
distinction matters to you, the thing to check before buying is whether the
auditorium is running 70mm film or a digital presentation. Theaters that have the
film capability generally say so explicitly, because it is the reason people drive
across the county to sit in their building.

## Sources

- [An LA projectionist breaks down the 70mm hype over 'The Odyssey'](https://laist.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/la-projectionist-breaks-70mm-imax-the-odyssey)