John Monaghan| Special to the Detroit Free Press
"Star Wars: The Last Jedi"will be everywhere this weekend, but audiences who catch it at the Emagine Novi will have bragging rights for having viewed it on Michigan's largest movie screen. The theater's new Super EMAX auditorium, which opens Friday, sports a 4K digital image that’s 92 feet wide by more than 48 feet tall.
Just how big is that?
"It's the size of a professional basketball court," says Anthony LaVerde, the new CEO of Troy-based Emagine Entertainment. "The only screen bigger is at Grauman's Chinese IMAX Theatre in Hollywood."
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The theater will be open to the public Friday starting at 6 a.m. A ribbon-cutting ceremony starts at 9 a.m., and a ticketed screening of "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" follows at 9:30 — the first of several throughout the day. Many of the opening weekend Super EMAX screenings are sold out. Tickets are $11 for matinees and $15 for shows after 6 p.m. The movie will also be shown on other screens at the Emagine Novi.
The auditorium opening caps a nearly $5-million restoration project at the multiplex, which is at the Fountain Walk Shopping Center on West 12 Mile Road. The updates also include a larger lobby and a cafeteria-style concession counter that includes a pizza oven, quesadilla bar and self-serve soda fountain. That new food service has been operational since late summer.
The Super EMAX theater, which seats 300, was created by combining two 280-seat auditoriums. It has powered recliner chairs whose cup holders can support concession trays. Like the lobby, the Super EMAX auditorium is decorated in earthy browns, beiges and blacks, a sharp departure from the bright purple that was once associated with Emagine. The freshly installed carpet and seats give the theater a new car smell.
The theater has a sit-down bar, though you can also bring alcohol into the auditorium. The ticket counter that once greeted audiences upon arrival is now off to the side, making the lobby, which has sleek chairs and couches, appear less like a movie theater and more like the lobby of a grand hotel.
To fill a screen so big, the Super EMAX 4K digital projection system uses a laser light source to provide the 48,000 lumens of light required to present a bright, clear picture. The Emagine's conventional EMAX screens (featured in all of its metro Detroit locations) require about 28,000 lumens. As of now, the Super EMAX screen is not equipped to show 3D films.
The Super EMAX auditorium also boasts a 64-channel Dolby Atmos immersive audio system.
"They can take a bird tweeting and put it in the rear corner, in this one speaker, so when you watch the movie, it's as if that sound is coming from behind you," says David Zylstra, Emagine’s vice president of technology.
The state’s largest movie screen previously was the IMAX screen at the Henry Ford in Dearborn. The theater severed ties with IMAX in late 2015 around the time of the release of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." Many fans were disappointed that they couldn’t view that film on the Henry Ford screen, which measured 84 feet by 62 feet.
The Henry Ford has since reopened with a slightly smaller, more rectangular screen measuring 80 feet by 44 feet. "The Last Jedi" will play there as well as part of what the theater calls the Giant Screen Experience.
IMAX has been associated with large screens since the 1970s. There are still three metro Detroit theaters that sport the IMAX banner: the AMC Livonia 20, AMC Forum 30 in Sterling Heights and the Star Great Lakes 25 in Auburn Hills. (IMAX also supplies the domed image for documentaries at the Michigan Science Center.)
LaVerde bristles at the notion that the EMAX name is simply Emagine's version of IMAX (“they are completely different technologies," he says) and points to other aspects of the auditorium that are unique to Emagine. These include the extra-wide 7-foot spaces between aisles and the front-row love seats (called cuddle chairs) that were designed by Paul Glantz, Emagine Entertainment cofounder and former CEO who now serves as the company's chairman.
"The chairs in the first row of an auditorium are inherently unsalable. No one typically wants to sit in them," says Glantz. He notes that the new cuddle chairs are not only some of the most comfortable and intimate in the theater, but a full 45 feet away from the screen.
"People are going to be wowed," he says.
LaVerde takes over as CEO
On Tuesday, Anthony LaVerde was named Emagine Entertainment’s new CEO. He is replacing cofounder and longtime CEO Paul Glantz, who will now serve as chairman.
The announcement came as expansion plans are under way by the theater chain, which has 206 screens in Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota. Emagine, based in Troy, launched its first metro Detroit location in Novi in 2002 and has since opened other theaters in Canton, Royal Oak, Rochester Hills, Birmingham and Macomb.
LaVerde, who has spent the past two decades working in finance in New York City and Chicago, moved to the Detroit area in 2016. He has worked for the past seven months as Emagine's chief of staff.
"I hope to drive additional industry-leading innovations, enhance the brandand expand analready successful business," he said in a statement.
