The first IMAX movie hall in Russia will be located in the Ramstore hypermarket currently being built on Leningradsky Shosse.
There are only 227 such cinemas worldwide and the technology -- and the tickets -- are several times more expensive than in ordinary cinemas.
The Canadian IMAX company that manufacturers the 3-D movie equipment posted an annual turnover of $120 million last year.
An IMAX screen is 15 meters wide -- twice the size of that in the Pushkin cinema. In order to watch 3-D films, cinema goers must wear special glasses.
In Moscow, the only cinema to have shown movies in 3-D was the Oktyabr, which stopped showing them in 1990.
Saby Karabei, press secretary with Ramenka, which owns Ramstore, said that several companies were participating in the competition to find an operating company for the IMAX moviehall. The results would soon be released, Karabei said, though he would not say which companies were in the running.
Sources agreed that the most likely winner in the competition would be either the BFC-Cinema or Cinema Park, founded by Sergei Mikhalkov's studio Tri Ti.
A spokesman for one of the participants in the tender, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that the amphitheater-style IMAX hall would seat 270 to 600 viewers.
The cheapest equipment costs between $5 million and $10 million, industry experts said.
And its not just the operators whose pockets are likely to get emptied. IMAX tickets in America cost about $30, while the cost of a night at an ordinary movie hall averages less than $10.
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