Richard gelfond imax biography examples
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IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond on What&#;s Next for the Big Screen
For big-screen movie company IMAX, the past several weeks must have seemed like the best of times and the worst of times. In the 13 years since Richard Gelfond and Bradley Wechsler, who share the titles of chairman and CEO, purchased the company from its Canadian founders, they have transformed IMAX from an attraction at museums and tourist locations into a network of theaters showing Hollywood blockbusters. The July 11 opening of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was the largest and most successful in IMAX history, with the IMAX version of the film setting a new single-day box office record and contributing $ million of the movie&#;s $ million domestic gross from July 11 through the weekend ending July
Yet despite the record box office, the company&#;s stock price remained moribund as it delayed its financial filings torestate its revenue recognition for the years and responded to an informal inquiry • If you want to know what lit the fire that burns hot within Rich Gelfond, the enormously successful 63 year-old CEO of the big-screen entertainment technology giant IMAX and a proud Stony Brook alum, you might want to begin where he begins: with the visit. He was only six at the time, but he remembers it vividly. His father, a furrier in Manhattan’s fashion district, had always bragged to Rich that he was the highest paid worker in the shop and a big shot. When the little boy made that visit one afternoon, the big shot took a break to show him around — which is when the boss, the real big shot, snapped, “Gelfond, get back to work!” Rich still shudders with the humiliation — the sadness that overcame his father with his cover blown. And he remembers this: He remembers, at six, saying to himself, “Never me.” It was a difficult promise to keep. Gelfond’s was a hardscrabble childhood. The family lived in a small Levitt-style house in Plainview, a Lo • EXCLUSIVE: In , Richard Gelfond didn&#;t know that much about the movie business. He was an investment banker, a lawyer and an entrepreneur and together with his business partner Brad Wechsler, snapped up Imax, a nice purveyor of nature and science documentaries. When it came to expanding to more kassasuccé fare, there was a bit of catch Studios wouldn&#;t skott movies in Imax unless there were more commercial theaters and exhibs wouldn&#;t build more theaters unless there were more Imax studio releases. Eventually, Imax developed a model that worked, and now the major studios, particularly when it comes to their tentpoles, can&#;t live without Imax. Not to mention filmmakers, including Christopher Nolan, James Cameron, J.J. Abrams, Brad Bird and Michael Bay can&#;t live without their large format cameras. Imax is that extra boost that
What Makes Rich Gelfond Run?
Imax CEO Richard Gelfond On Large-Format Future: &#;Avengers: Age Of Ultron&#;, Rivals, TV Shows & Adult Fare &#; CinemaCon