West Coast’s First Imax 3-D Theater to Debut in O.C. : Entertainment: High-tech sight-and-sound system with six-story screen will open at the Irvine Spectrum in November.

If the really big picture simply isn’t big enough, hang onto your seats, because big-screen king Imax is bringing the West Coast’s first 3-D sight-and-sound theater to Orange County.

The six-story screen will open in late November at the Edwards Theatres complex in the Irvine Spectrum Entertainment Center, a $50-million, Moroccan-themed entertainment, restaurant and retail complex now under construction near the El Toro Y.

The Imax theater will be the 21st screen at the complex, which, with nearly 7,000 seats, will be the nation’s largest multiplex. Construction of the traditional theater screens is already underway, and Edwards Theatres President W. James Edwards III said crews will try to finish the Imax theater in time for the center’s November opening.

The theater is the latest drawing card for the new center at Irvine Spectrum, which has a heavy emphasis on eating and entertainment. That blend is designed to appeal to Orange County residents at a time when traditional shopping centers are competing with theme parks, movie theaters and sports teams for consumer bucks.

The Imax 3-D sight-and-sound system headed for Irvine is light years beyond the campy red-and-blue 3-D glasses of yesteryear. Moviegoers will don high-tech headsets that combine liquid-crystal lenses and state-of-the-art speakers to deliver what is described as a stunning visual and audio effect.

“This is a cinematic experience that simply can’t be duplicated,” Edwards said. “We already had some of the largest screens on the West Coast coming in . . . [but] this will knock your socks off.”

The first 3-D sight-and-sound screen opened in Manhattan last fall with a 3-D film starring Val Kilmer and is expected to draw 1 million customers during its first year. In contrast, Edwards said, it typically takes a suburban theater with 10 screens to draw 1 million customers a year.

Consumers won’t have to pay big bucks to see the big picture, Edwards said. Admission probably will run about $8 for adults, just $1 higher than ticket prices at existing Edwards theaters.

With a screen 65 feet high and 90 feet wide, the Imax theater in Irvine will show a variety of the more than 100 big-screen titles in existence. It will be able to show both the handful of three-dimensional titles in existence and the two-dimensional titles shown at less-sophisticated Imax theaters around the world.

The West Coast’s first 3-D sight-and-sound Imax screen will be “a huge draw for the county and increase the [Spectrum] project’s diversity,” said Frederick O. Evans, president of the Irvine Co.’s retail properties division. “Think of it: There’s not a movie that’s made today that we can’t show.”

Edwards, who joined Evans at the International Council of Shopping Centers’ annual meeting in Las Vegas on Wednesday to announce the Imax project, said the Imax theater is further proof that the worlds of retail and entertainment are merging.

“Location-based entertainment is the current buzzword,” Edwards said. “It’s all about making as exciting a destination entertainment venue as you can.”

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Retailers are betting that the Irvine Spectrum’s $50-million entertainment center and other projects now on the drawing boards can draw increasingly fickle consumers to their commercial centers.

The new centers “offer the perfect, affordable place for a family to get away,” said John Eicklein, president of Leisure Industry Research Group, a Novato, Calif., consulting firm. “Demographics say we’re all stressed out and don’t have enough time to get away. Well, here’s an answer: . . . Let’s go see an Imax movie and maybe shop at one of the unique retail shops in Irvine.”

While the commercial real estate and entertainment industries are buzzing with proposals, only a handful, like Forum Shops at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and CityWalk in Los Angeles, have materialized, said Imax Vice Chairman Richard Gelfond.

“Few have been willing to write the check for it,” Gelfond said. “The Irvine Co. and Edwards are really stepping up.”

The 250,000-square-foot Spectrum center is near the intersection of the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways, which carries more than 400,000 cars daily. The center, designed to look like a Moroccan village, will have some decidedly high-tech attractions, including a computer-guided laser lighting system and video walls.

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The rapidly blurring line that separates entertainment from retailing is the driving force behind Imax’s expansion beyond its traditional niche--big screens at museums and science centers that focus on education.

Last year, Imax screens in 121 theaters worldwide drew 50 million people, who paid about $200 million to watch films like “To the Limit,” about human biology, and “Destiny in Space,” about America’s space program.

Imax won’t abandon its stronghold, but the Toronto company--as well as Hollywood production companies that can make movies for the 3-D screen--hopes to exploit its largely untapped potential on the entertainment side of the aisle.

Some other big names in the movie business agree that bigger screens have a big future.

Sony, for example, which operates the 3-D Imax theater that opened in October in Manhattan’s Lincoln Square cineplex, plans other screens in half a dozen locations, including San Francisco, Berlin and Chicago.

While the Manhattan theater is the only Imax screen using state-of-the-art 3-D sight and sound, about a dozen screens at museum locations incorporate parts of Imax’s 3-D technology. Imax officials anticipate that the total number of 3-D screens will grow to about two dozen by the end of next year. “This is really going to catch on quickly,” Gelfond said.

Imax reported strong consumer support for big-screen theaters that it has opened in commercial settings in Capetown, South Africa, and Barcelona, Spain.

Irvine Co. officials on Wednesday were crowing about the Irvine Spectrum’s coup: “The fact that they’re choosing Irvine over Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Francisco for the first 3-D screen in the West is, for us, pretty special,” spokeswoman Dawn McCormick said.

During the 25 years since the first Imax screen opened, about 100 Imax titles have been filmed. And more than a dozen titles are now in production, several of which are more theatrical than educational, Gelfond said.

The 3-D Imax screen in Irvine will build upon the company’s reputation for soaring photography and breathtaking views. “It’s not like watching a screen,” Gelfond said. “It’s more like the images are projected into the environment. We sometimes call it ‘shared virtual reality.’ ”

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Imax’s 3-D movies harness a complex blend of unusual camera techniques, oversized film negatives that deliver extraordinarily sharp pictures and a complicated projection system that operates in conjunction with high-tech viewer headsets.

The system projects images alternately for the left and right eyes as infrared signals prompt liquid-crystal lenses in viewers’ headsets to “blink” 48 times a second. That complicated interaction creates the illusion of a three-dimensional experience. A digital sound system embedded in the theater’s walls and inside the headsets furthers the three-dimensional illusion.

During weekdays, Edwards said, the Irvine theater might run educational titles that are especially appealing to schoolchildren. First-run films, including “Wings of Courage,” which has been playing to sellout crowds in Manhattan on weekends, might play on weeknights and weekends. Specialty films, such as “Rolling Stones: At the Max,” which documents the rock ‘n’ roll band in concert, also could be showcased.

As the number of Imax theaters grows, the number of films with a story line, as opposed to an educational theme, is expected to grow, Edwards said.

But don’t count on a six-story Arnold Schwarzenegger making his way to the 3-D screen in Irvine. “We don’t want to make ‘Terminator II,’ ” Gelfond said. “But there are plenty of opportunities for educational and entertaining films.”

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Imax on the Horizon

Edwards Theatres’ 21-screen complex under construction in Irvine will include an Imax 3-D theater. What the plan involves:

* Seats: 500 * Screen: Rectangle, 65 feet high and 90 feet wide * Sound: Six-channel, high-fidelity speakers with sub-bass throughout theater. Supplemental speakers within headset project sound around wearer. Quality of sound is independent of seat location. * Current locations: New York City * Proposed sites: San Francisco, Chicago and Berlin

Film Features

High-tech help: Imax 3-D viewers will wear light, cordless headsets with liquid-crystal lenses. Infrared signals projected from the screen will trigger the lenses to alternately open and close creating the three-dimensional effect.

Close-up experience: Huge screen size and a three-dimensional “viewing cone” combine toseemingly bring images closer.

Film size: Imax is shot with film 10 times larger than standard 35-millimeter film and is projected at twice the normal frame rate, producing greater clarity and depth of field.

Source: Irvine Co., Imax Corp.

Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times