The Fate of the Furious is the most watched 4DX film of 2017, and is expected to surpass the 1.5 million-attendance mark. The box office success was driven by the best opening week performance in 4DX history, reaching 760,000 moviegoers – 31 percent more than the first week attendance for 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens (580,000) in 2015.
Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, in the 4DX format, premiered first in Norway and France last month and continues its worldwide distribution at 369 4DX auditoriums in 47 countries including but not limited to the U.S., U.K., Canada, Mexico, South Korea, China and Japan.
The NFL Experience Times Square has selected D-Box immersive motion seats as part of its sports-themed immersive attraction in the heart of New York City.
Majid Al Futtaim Cinemas – Vox Cinemas in Qatar is opening a CJ 4DPlex auditorium at the new Vox Cinemas Doha Festival City, located in Um Salal Muhammad. It marks the 48th country worldwide and the seventh in the Middle East to bring 4DX to moviegoers.
Positron unveiled a new scent application for its Voyager cinematic virtual reality chair during a sneak peek at two-time Oscar and Grammy winner A.R. Rahman’s upcoming VR musical Le Musk at the National Association of Broadcasters convention underway in Las Vegas. Rahman is the first director to take advantage of commissioned scents on the platform.
VIP Cinema Seating has expanded its manufacturing facility expansion giving the company the capability to produce 2,000 luxury cinema seats per day. Like the four major facilities expansions that came before it, this fifth expansion within eight years, comes in response to dramatically burgeoning demand as exhibitors across the world are recognizing the value of luxury seating in the cinema-going experience. Since VIP introduced the concept of luxury reclining seating to the theatre industry in 2008, the company has completed over 500 custom cinema projects worldwide, finishing 2016 with a 44.2 percentage increase in overall shipments.
CJ 4DPlex has partnered with Nordisk Film Kino to bring its immersive 4DX theatre technology featuring moving seats and environmental effects to Norway for the first time. The newest 4DX site will be at the Ringen theatre in Oslo, with 140 4DX seats to be installed in time for a March opening. The first title, currently scheduled in the 4DX format at this theatre, is Kong: The Skull Island.
Immersive cinema seating is one of the fastest growing trends in mainstream motion picture exhibition and shows no signs of slowing. Translating the action on the screen into what a viewer experiences in the seat is no simple task and requires the hard work of many talented people. To learn more about that process, I recently spoke, via email, with Catherine Yi, creative director of 4DX America.
The Guitammer Company added more than 11,300 new ButtKicker equipped cinema seats for 57 new auditoriums in 2016, a 475 percent increase from 2015. Worldwide there are now more than 20,000 ButtKicker enabled seats in over 105 cinema auditoriums.
CJ 4DPlex, makers of dynamic seating for movie theatres, has merged with Simuline, a company that creates rides and simulators for the attraction industry. With the merger, CJ 4DPlex hopes to expand its business beyond immersive cinema, including, virtual reality and other areas of the attraction industry.
