Moore Hits the "Big Time" With New IMAX Theatre

Oklahoma moviegoers will soon have a larger variety of movie choices to pick from.

Much larger.

The new Moore Warren IMAX boasts the nation's largest movie screen, and the theatre needed help this week to make the "big time" happen.   

It was definitely a team effort, with fifty people gathered to hoist the huge screen.  Twenty-five Warren employees handled the bottom part, while another twenty-five Moore firefighters pulled the screen up and into place from a high catwalk.

"The one-hundred-foot wide screen is six stories tall, according to Warren Theatres CEO Bill Warren.

"I have a tape ruler and we can go measure it right now if you would like to," laughed Warren.  "I expect this to be the top-grossing IMAX theatre in the nation, period."

The original Moore Warren Theatre opened in 2008, and by all accounts has been a huge success.

"We're actually thirty percent above our projections, and the day this theater opened it became the number-one-grossing theater in the state of Oklahoma," Warren said.  "Why wouldn't we wanna take a successful venue like IMAX and add it on to one of the most successful theatres in the country?"

The new IMAX is connected to the existing theatre, but will also have its own entrance.

"We wouldn't have done it justice if we didn't have its own box office and its own lobby," Warren said."

The Moore firefighters who helped install the screen were paid for their work, but plan to donate those payments to the fire department's Santa Express program, which provides Christmas gifts to area kids in need.  That donation will also be matched by Warren Theatres. 

The new Warren IMAX opens on February 24.