MANILA, Philippines – SM Prime Holdings Inc., the Philippines’ largest mall operator, will soon be launching additional IMAX screens in its theaters in Luzon and the Visayas.

The move will allow the company to serve affluent Filipinos who prefer to experience seeing movies on a much bigger screen than conventional film systems.

IMAX, which stands for Image Maximum), is a film format created by the Canada-based IMAX Corp.

An IMAX in Cebu may take awhile since it “has a fluid schedule,’ said Edgar Trejero, senior vice president for West Avenue Theater Corp. (WATC), the cinema operator subsumed under SM Prime.

WATC has launched an IMAX Theater at SM City North Edsa, the second such moviehouse after the first one in the SM Mall of Asia (MOA) in Pasay City.

SM is set open another IMAX at the Bonifacio Global City between late 2010 and in the first quarter of 2011.

“IMAX patrons belong to the ‘AB’ class and they’re the yuppies. Most of them also have their own cars and after watching a movie, they dine and shop at the mall. Patrons of a regular cinema use the public transport to get to the mall and after watching the movie, they go home,’ Trejero added.

In all its 34 malls across the country, there are 206 screens with a total seat capacity of 127,000.

Annual revenues from cinema tickets reached P2.5 billion. But in the first half, cinema attendance was up three to four percent.

“IMAX is giving us decent returns,’ said Trejero.

The MOA IMAX, however, will remain the largest screen in the country, with a screen of 24-meter height, while the one in North Edsa and all the other IMAX screens will only have a height of up to 15 meters.

A regular cinema screen has a height of between eight meters to 10 meters.

IMAX tickets are sold as much as P400 each, while the most expensive regular cinema ticket in the Philippines costs as much as P200 each. – GMANews.TV