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DURHAM -- Southpoint Cinemas' new IMAX auditorium is scheduled to open May 20 with the premiere of "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," to be shown in IMAX 3-D.
The auditorium is located inside of a 6,240-square-foot addition to Southpoint Cinemas that's been under construction since the fall of last year, said Dale Coleman, vice president of Charlotte-based company Stone Theatres, which operates Southpoint Cinemas.
The new auditorium will contain the 17th screen at the theater, which is located at The Streets at Southpoint Mall on Renaissance Parkway in Durham.
"We're excited to finally be close to getting it open for the public," Coleman said. "We think the Southpoint mall is, without a doubt, a destination retail center in Raleigh-Durham, and we want the Southpoint Cinemas to be a destination movie location in the Raleigh-Durham market."
According to a news release, the new auditorium will have 21-inch risers to allow for unobstructed viewing of the new 62 ½-foot wide movie screen, according to a news release. The 358-seat auditorium will be outfitted with 24-inch faux leather rockers.
It will be customized for "The IMAX Experience," according to the release, with two digital projectors with custom lenses, as well as proprietary technology that shows films in both 2-D and in IMAX 3-D.
It will have the IMAX audio system and IMAX's theatre "geometry," which includes a large, curved screen positioned closer to the audience.
"We will have access to all of IMAX's slate of films," Coleman said. "If, for some reason, there was some time in between releases, and there is a 2D digital film that was being released, and given whatever our IMAX schedule was, we would have the opportunity to exhibit that as well."
The theater addition at Southpoint was going to feature PDX, or Premium Digital Experience technology so viewers could watch digital 2-D and 3-D films in the new space.
But plans changed. Durham City-County Inspections received a letter dated March 10 asking for approval for changes to the construction plans to pave the way for installation of IMAX Corp. technology.
"The large-format auditoriums are really something that is becoming very popular in our industry, most exhibitors are considering IMAX or their own large format," Coleman said. "What we're constantly striving to do is to give the communities, our patrons, the very finest in presentation, and the IMAX presentation, we feel, is the very finest."
For the grand opening on May 20, the first 200 people in line for the 7 p.m. show will be given free tickets.
In addition, followers who click "like" on Stone Theatres' Facebook page will be entered to win a sneak peak of the auditorium before May 20, as well as to get access to discounts and a VIP preview event.
