Sunrise on the Reaping is screening in IMAX in Australia from 19 November
We’ve confirmed The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping will screen in IMAX at IMAX Melbourne from opening day, Thursday 19 November, IMAX Melbourne has confirmed to THGAustralia, putting the world’s largest IMAX screen in play for the film a day before it reaches the United States.
We asked because the listing looked wrong: Sunrise on the Reaping has been sitting on the venue’s Coming Soon page in standard format while the titles either side of it carry IMAX tags, which usually means one of two things: a booking that hasn’t landed, or a web page nobody has updated since June. It was the second one. “Yes we will be showing it,” IMAX Melbourne told us.
Catching Fire remains the franchise’s best use for the format. Francis Lawrence shot the arena sequences with IMAX 15/70 cameras, and in true IMAX houses the frame expanded to 1.43:1 the moment Katniss rose into the Quarter Quell, from a letterboxed strip to seven storeys of screen, the audio going with it. Songbirds and Snakes did a gentler version of the same trick a decade later, opening to 1.90:1 for selected sequences. So there is precedent, and we do spot some expanded scenes in the IMAX trailer for Sunrise on the Reaping.
The 2013 IMAX one-sheet. The billing block is the part that matters: select sequences filmed with IMAX cameras.
The Songbirds and Snakes IMAX campaign, from the US rollout. Formatted exclusively for IMAX is not the same thing as filmed with IMAX cameras, and that gap is precisely what is still open on Sunrise.
What there isn’t is an announcement. Asked whether Sunrise will be presented in 1.43:1, IMAX Melbourne said it doesn’t have that information yet, and that IMAX-exclusive details including the expanded aspect ratio will come from IMAX Corp closer to release. Nothing so far from Lionsgate or IMAX has described the film as shot with IMAX cameras or certified under the Filmed for IMAX programme, and cinematographer Jo Willems, on his fifth Hunger Games picture, hasn’t said either way in the press he has done so far. Anyone currently telling you the arena expands is reasoning from Catching Fire, not from a press release. However, it’s a good bet and we’ll provide more details as they come.
The third thing we asked was how long the film holds the screen. Roadshow’s booking terms are commercial in confidence, which is the answer every exhibitor gives to that question and shouldn’t be read as bad news. But with Avengers: Doomsday landing in mid-December, and IMAX auditoriums the most contested real estate in Australian exhibition over summer, a November title generally gets its run and then makes way. If the museum screen is the version of this film you want, the first two weekends are the safe ones.
Why that screen and not another
IMAX Melbourne sits eight storeys under the Melbourne Museum in Carlton and has, by a margin nobody has closed since 1998, the largest 1.43:1 screen in the world: 32 metres wide, 23 metres high, 461 seats, dual 4K laser projection and the only IMAX 15/70 film projector in the country. In a full-height presentation it is the one room in Australia that shows the entire frame. Every other IMAX auditorium here tops out at 1.90:1, which is still a considerably bigger picture than a Vmax or a Gold Class screen and is the ratio most expanded sequences are mastered for anyway.
Which matters more than it used to, because there are now nine other options. Australia had a single IMAX screen in 2022. It has ten in 2026, six of them opened last year alone, and IMAX reported a record 18.6 million dollars at the Australian box office off the back of it. Melbourne has four on its own now, counting Hoyts Melbourne Central, Hoyts Chadstone and Village Fountain Gate alongside the museum. Sydney has Darling Harbour and Hoyts Blacktown, Perth has Carousel, the Gold Coast has Pacific Fair, and Canberra has had one since late 2024. Hoyts signed a second deal with IMAX in April to take its network from four screens to fourteen across Australia and New Zealand.
Put that next to the franchise’s Australian history and the shape of November gets clearer. Australia has opened ahead of the United States on all six films. Mockingjay – Part 1 was the highest-grossing film in the country in 2014. What’s changed is that a Hunger Games release can now play the format nationally instead of in one basement in Carlton, and Roadshow has every reason to want the screens.
Booking
Tickets aren’t on sale anywhere yet. The last few films opened presales roughly four to six weeks out, which points at October, and the chains tend to load sessions quietly before anyone announces anything. We watch for it. When it moves, our Sunrise on the Reaping hub will carry direct links for every IMAX site in the country.
We’ve put the same questions to Hoyts, Village and Event, and we’ll update this piece as they come back. The aspect ratio we’ll have when IMAX Corp confirms to us soon.
Sources: IMAX Melbourne, in correspondence with THGAustralia, 13 August 2026 · IMAX Melbourne · IMAX Corporation, HOYTS partnership announcement, April 2026 · Official trailer, Lionsgate / IMAX · IF Magazine
