Cinerama - Cinerama Today

Cinerama Today

The Cinerama company exists today as an entity of the Pacific Theatres chain. In recent years, surviving and new Cinerama prints have been screened at the following venues:

• the Pictureville Cinema at the National Media Museum in Bradford, England beginning in June 1993
• the New Neon Cinema in Dayton, Ohio from 1996 to 1999
• the refurbished Seattle Cinerama in Seattle beginning in 1999
• Pacific Theatres’ Cinerama Dome in Hollywood beginning in 2002.

In 1998, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen purchased Seattle's Martin Cinerama, which then underwent a major restoration/upgrade.

As of 2004, the Pictureville Cinema, Martin Cinerama and Cinerama Dome continue to hold periodic screenings of three-projector Cinerama movies. The Cinerama Dome was designed for the three-projector system but never actually had it installed until recent years as it opened with the first of the single film 70 mm Cinerama films, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

A 2003 documentary, Cinerama Adventure, took a look back at the history of the Cinerama process, as well as digitally recreating the Cinerama experience via clips of true Cinerama films (using transfers from original Cinerama prints). And Turner Entertainment (via Warner Bros.) has struck new Cinerama prints of How the West Was Won for exhibition in true Cinerama theatres around the world.

Cinerama established the standard for all of the large screen formats that followed. Its successors, Todd-AO, CinemaScope, and the various 70 mm formats, all attempted to equal or surpass its grandeur while avoiding its problems to greater or lesser degrees of success. In movie theaters today the large format IMAX system continues the tradition, although the screen is taller and often less wide.

In 2008 a Blu-ray Disc of How The West Was Won was released, offering a recreation of Cinerama for home viewing. The three Cinerama images were digitally stitched together so that the resulting image does not have the visible seams of older versions. Furthermore, as a second viewing option, 3D mapping technology was used to produce an image that approximates the curved screen, called "SmileBox".

On January 14, 2012, an original Cinerama camera filmed a sequence at the Lasky Demille Barn, the original home to Famous Players Lasky, later to be renamed Paramount Pictures. This ushered in a new era as the first film photographed in the Cinerama process in almost 50 years. This sequence is part of a new production filmed entirely in the three panel process. The new film, In the Picture, is slated to open a Cinerama festival in September 2012 at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, California.