Cherisse Moe

The Amaz­ing Spi­der-Man scored big on its open­ing day at the Dig­i­cel IMAX The­atre, One Wood­brook Place, on Wednes­day. Ex­cit­ed young and not-so-young fans turned up to take in the high­ly-an­tic­i­pat­ed su­per­hero movie on the 40 x 70 foot 3D screen. Spe­cial­ly in­vit­ed guests, in­clud­ing the me­dia, were among those who viewed the film, which stars An­drew Garfield as Spi­der­Man (Pe­ter Park­er), Em­ma Stone as Gwen Sta­cy, Park­er's high school crush, and Rhys Ifans as Dr Curt Connnors. The movie holds the high­est open­ing in box of­fice his­to­ry in the US, rak­ing in an im­pres­sive US $35 mil­lion. Movie crit­ics fore­see con­tin­ued suc­cess through­out the com­ing weeks.

IMAX chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, In­grid Jahra, stat­ed that she was hap­py with the turnout for the movie's launch and said it had of­fi­cial­ly kicked off the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion. "I think it will do very well," Jhara said in a re­port. "The open­ing day has so far been very good." In 2010, Sony Pic­tures En­ter­tain­ment an­nounced the can­cel­la­tion of Spi­der-Man 4 and opt­ed to in­tro­duce a new cast and crew. Packed with web swing­ing and high jump­ing ac­tion, the movie did not dis­ap­point. It cost an es­ti­mat­ed US $215,000,000 to film, is based on Mar­vel Comics' Spi­der-Man and is filled with tongue in cheek hu­mour. Di­rect­ed by Marc Webb (no pun in­tend­ed), the film tells the sto­ry of Park­er's jour­ney to un­cov­er the truth be­hind the deaths of his par­ents. On that jour­ney, he al­so dis­cov­ers his su­per­hero pow­ers and is forced to make some dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions which have se­ri­ous reper­cus­sions for those clos­est to him. Sony has al­ready an­nounced a se­quel to the movie, The Amaz­ing Spi­der-Man 2, which is set to hit US the­atres on May 2, 2014.

Busi­ness has been good

Equipped with laser aligned sur­round sound, IMAX can ac­com­mo­date 364 pa­trons and pro­vides the view­er with the ul­ti­mate cin­e­ma ex­pe­ri­ence for $75. Since open­ing its doors in Au­gust last year, IMAX con­tin­ues to en­joy a steady flow of pa­trons, "more than 100,000," not­ed Jahra. "We were the top per­form­ing the­atre in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean for the Avengers movie. We don't know what Spi­der-Man will bring yet but I'm sure it will do re­al­ly good," she said. Ex­press­ing grat­i­tude to her spon­sors: Dig­i­cel, At­lantic, First Cit­i­zens, Carib and Ansa Au­to­mo­tive, for mak­ing the IMAX dream come alive, Jahra said she en­vi­sioned even big­ger things for Imax in the fu­ture. Does this mean there will soon be an­oth­er IMAX in Trinidad? "It's dif­fi­cult to have two screens with a pop­u­la­tion of on­ly 1.3 mil­lion. It may not be suc­cess­ful­ly vi­able," she said. "But, we'll see."