SS Rajamouli is ready to sit on dharna if there aren’t enough IMAX screens in India by 2027: Here’s how much it costs to build one screen | Telugu News
3 min readHyderabadFeb 8, 2026 05:30 PM IST
Filmmaker SS Rajamouli and his crew had to build a 100 x 130 feet screen to showcase the teaser of his time-travel epic Varanasi in Hyderabad last year. He has now vowed to stage a dharna outside the IMAX office in Los Angeles if sufficient IMAX screens are not made available in India ahead of the film’s scheduled theatrical release on April 7, 2027.
However, it isn’t easy to build an IMAX screen particularly in India. Given the infrastructure in the US, building a new IMAX screen there costs somewhere between $10 million and Rs 15 million, that’s somewhere between Rs 9 crore and Rs 13 crore. But in India, it’s even costlier. Building an IMAX screen in India can cost up to Rs 25 crore.
Building an IMAX screen isn’t only about scale, but also about a technological upgrade. It also entails purchase and maintenance of IMAX equipment like projectors and screens. Given it’s a specialized technology, IMAX enters into long-term (10 years) deals with local exhibitors or national cinema chains for the same.
For instance, nine years ago, PVR signed a deal with IMAX, where it invested Rs 50 crore to build five more IMAX screens in India. These included three new screens and retrofitting of two existing screens. The investment on each IMAX screen was Rs 10 crore back then, four times the investment on a regular screen (Rs 2 crore to Rs 2.5 crore).
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IMAX tickets in India are priced on an average at at least Rs 100-120 over and above the regular ticket price. Since the baseline itself is so low, it becomes increasingly difficult to cover the high costs through footfall. It takes more than even four years to recover the costs of building an IMAX screen despite the relatively higher prices.
As of 2026, there are 35 IMAX screens in India, way lower than 400 in the US and 800 in China. That’s quite a slow progress given IMAX entered China in 2002, a year after it did in India in 2001.
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IMAX has said it’s open to SS Rajamouli’s plea to have more IMAX screens in India as long as a local partner steps up for the deal.
In an interview with The Economic Times, IMAX Chief Commercial Officer Giovanni Dolci stated the growth of IMAX in India has been almost at 60% since 2020 in the last six years. Yet, there’s scope to create at least 150 more IMAX screens in India.
Starring Mahesh Babu as Rudhra, Priyanka Chopra as Mandakini, and Prithviraj Sukumaran as the antagonist Kumbha, Varanasi will also have one of its worlds inspired by a chapter from the Indian epic Ramayana, in which Mahesh will essay Lord Rama.
