During the Monday night screening of fifteen minutes of Doctor Strange at select IMAX theaters, minds were blown and hype levels were risen by the magical kaleidoscope of insanity fans saw on the giant screens. There was also some news, courtesy of Benedict Cumberbatch’s introduction ahead of the actual movie footage screened, as he revealed there will be over an hour of IMAX footage in the film. Many action movies and comic book movies show off two or three marquee scenes, but an hour of it is nearly unprecedented.
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“I’m Benedict Cumberbatch, and I’m honored to be joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” the actor said. “I’m so excited for you to experience this special sneak peek of Doctor Strange as it was meant to be seen, in IMAX. When Doctor Strange hits the theaters on November the Fourth, you’ll see how we specially formatted over an hour of the film to fill more of the screen exclusively for IMAX theaters.”
As he delivered the news, Cumberbatch started to make hand motions, then dragged the image up and down to fill the entire IMAX screen.
“I could use my reality bending powers to save the universe as we know it, but no, we did this because it looks cool, really cool,” he joked.
Indeed, the rest of the footage dealt quite a bit with reality-bending, and the journey through other dimensions in 3D IMAX wowed audiences across the country, with reports of theaters full of people chanting “show it again!” and erupting in applause and cheers (including at the screening ComicBook.com attended).
Knowing there’s over an hour of IMAX footage should encourage a lot more fans to shell out the extra cash to view the film on the over-sized screen. In 2015, average movie ticket price was $8.43 (which is a bit aschew due to late-run films in discount theaters), while IMAX prices were $19.69, more than double the average. Getting something substantial like over half the film in the expanded format – the total run time of Doctor Strange is 1 hour and 55 minutes – is a value add for moviegoers.
Doctor Strange hits theaters November 4, 2016.