Imax Corp. IMAX said Tuesday it has best ever first-quarter in 2023, chalking up $282.2 million in box office receipts to crush its previous record set in 2016 by more than $10 million. “The record-breaking results were powered by a potent global mix of releases; the first quarter now stands as IMAX’s highest grossing quarter ever for local language releases and also saw the stunning performance of James Cameron’s “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the cinema operator said in a statement. The Avatar movie accounted for $255 million of Imax receipts, marking its highest grossing first-run release of all time. CEO Rich Gelfond said Imax expects to return to 2019 box office levels this year with a number of high profile releases to come, including Universal Pictures’ “The Super Mario Bros. Movie”, Disney/Marvel Studios’ “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” and the highly anticipated French local language film “The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan”. The stock has gained 3% in the last 12 months, while the S&P 500 SPX has fallen 10%.
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