What's the biggest IMAX theater in the world? It depends who you ask

If you'd like to visit one, there could be a lot of travel involved.

In the wake of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey , cinephiles are in a desperate search for the biggest, most vibrant theaters available. The trend is the high-water mark of the industry's shift towards premium formats. But with only a select few theaters capable of playing IMAX's coveted 70mm film format , many filmgoers are debating the importance of aspect ratios and film perforations as passionately as they do the films themselves. And with Dune: Part 3 's IMAX screenings already experiencing huge demand, you may want to begin your search for the best screen near you sooner rather than later.

Ticking off your movie theater bucket list with the largest and most vibrant IMAX screens might be more difficult than you expect. For one thing, IMAX diehards continue to debate which of the Canadian company's 1,800 global screens constitute a true IMAX experience. The discussion is more than merely a question of size, and rekindles a longstanding debate about the differing quality of IMAX's various formats.

While some moviegoers might find the hairsplitting to be pedantic or elitist, these distinctions render real-world differences in viewers' IMAX experiences.

On the surface, the world's largest movie screen is the IMAX theater at the Traumpalast Leonberg cinema complex in Germany's southwest region of Baden-Württemberg. A gargantuan 127 feet wide and 69 feet tall, the German cineplex holds the world record for the largest surface area of any movie theater in the world at roughly 8,770 square feet.  Recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest theater in 2023, the screen is wider than a Boeing 737 is long.

However, some cinephiles are likely to raise their fists in protest. The debate centers around two central points: the film format of the theater's projectors and the subsequent aspect ratio of the screen. IMAX theaters come in two main varieties: digital and 70mm film . IMAX Digital theaters are often retrofitted large format screens that use either a dual xenon lamp projector or a laser projection system.

The aspect ratio of these projections, which relates to the proportion between the height and width of a screen, is an impressive 1.90:1, meaning they are much taller and wider than your average movie theater. However, some purists dub IMAX's digital screens as 'LieMax' theaters , as they fail to achieve the resolution of their 70mm film counterparts.

IMAX's 15/70mm film theaters, meanwhile, are widely considered the best premium format on the market. Without diving into the intricacies of IMAX's revolutionary approach to projections, the key to the discussion regarding screen size is their unique 1.43:1 aspect ratio.