Sunrise on the Reaping in IMAX Australia: what's confirmed, where to see it, and why the window may be one week
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping will play in IMAX at IMAX Melbourne from opening day, Thursday 19 November 2026. The cinema confirmed it to THG Australia after we asked. Its Coming Soon page still lists the film in standard format while the titles around it carry IMAX tags, and a listing lag isn’t a decision, so we went to the source. The answer was yes: they’ll be showing it in IMAX.
That’s the first of three questions Australian fans have had since IMAX Corp put the film on its 2026 slate last October. The second, which ratio and how much of the film, is still open. The third, how long it stays, turns out to have an answer already sitting in the release calendar, and it isn’t the one we’d have liked.
What is confirmed
Lionsgate has sold this as an IMAX release since the first teaser. The official trailer carries “in IMAX November 20”, the US date; we get it a day earlier, as usual. IMAX Corp named the title in its 2026 line-up in October 2025, with the caveat that the slate wasn’t a fully confirmed listing. IMAX Melbourne has now confirmed the Australian end of that for its own screen, from 19 November.
We haven’t heard back from the Hoyts, Village, Event or Dendy IMAX sites yet, but there’s no reason to think any of them would sit this out. A Lionsgate IMAX title on a global slate goes to the whole network by default. We’ve asked each chain and will update this piece as they answer.
What is not confirmed: the aspect ratio
This is the question for anyone who was in the museum screen for Catching Fire in 2013 and watched the frame open up for the arena. Francis Lawrence shot the Quarter Quell, the film’s final 48 minutes, for the IMAX ratio, part of it on IMAX 15/70 cameras, and the tube-into-the-arena expansion is still talked about as one of the best uses of the format’s shifting frame. Thirteen years on it remains the franchise’s high point in IMAX.
Whether Sunrise on the Reaping does anything similar, and at what ratio, hasn’t been announced. IMAX Melbourne told us they don’t have this information yet; anything IMAX-specific, expanded ratio included, will come from IMAX Corp closer to release. Nothing from Lionsgate, IMAX or cinematographer Jo Willems has said the film was shot on IMAX cameras or certified under the Filmed for IMAX program. There are seating-guide sites already claiming the arena will expand to 1.90:1. None of them cite a source. Until one appears, any talk of expanding scenes is speculation, ours included.
The bigger problem: the IMAX calendar
Here is what nobody has spelled out for Australian fans yet. On the day IMAX Corp put Sunrise on the Reaping on its slate, the two weeks after it belonged to Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, which Netflix had booked as a global IMAX exclusive from Thanksgiving Day, 26 November, ahead of its streaming debut. In May, Netflix moved Narnia to a full theatrical release in February 2027. If you’d been following that story you might reasonably have thought the IMAX screens had opened up.
They didn’t. Netflix kept the slot. Within days it announced that David Fincher’s The Adventures of Cliff Booth, the Quentin Tarantino-scripted follow-up to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with Brad Pitt, would take the same exclusive two-week IMAX run globally from 25 November, before landing on Netflix on 23 December. No Australian date has been confirmed by a distributor or exhibitor. Listing aggregators carry 25 November here too, though that falls on a Wednesday and Australian wide releases normally open Thursday, which would make it the 26th.
Read that against 19 November and the picture is plain. Unless Roadshow and IMAX have carved out an exception, Sunrise on the Reaping gets one week on Australian IMAX screens, opening Thursday to the following Wednesday, before Cliff Booth takes them. A week or so after that, Dune: Part Three arrives with a three-week IMAX exclusive of its own — 17 December in Australia, 18 December in North America — and takes them again. That deal is the reason Avengers: Doomsday, opening the same day, lost IMAX in the United States and most territories, though it holds onto the format in select international markets. The gap between Cliff Booth finishing and Dune opening, the second week of December, is the only slack in the system.
We asked IMAX Melbourne whether Roadshow has locked in a minimum run. Their answer was that distributor agreements are commercial in confidence. Fair enough. The practical version: if you want this film in IMAX, book the first weekend and don’t plan on a second.
Why the museum screen matters
IMAX Melbourne sits seven storeys under the Melbourne Museum in Carlton. It has the world’s largest 1.43:1 screen, 32 metres wide by 23 high, dual 4K laser projection and Australia’s only IMAX 15/70 film projector — one of roughly 41 auditoriums on the planet that could run 70mm film for The Odyssey in July. If the film opens up to 1.43:1, this is the room that shows every centimetre of it. If it stays at 1.90:1 or a conventional widescreen ratio, you still get the largest picture available and the 12-channel mix. Either way it’s the room for opening night, which is presumably why they were quick to confirm.
It’s also, right now, the hottest room in the country. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, the first feature shot entirely on IMAX film cameras, has become the highest-grossing IMAX release ever, past $289 million worldwide as of 9 August and clear of Avatar, whose lifetime IMAX gross the trades put somewhere between $256 and $271 million. It has weeks still to run. IMAX Melbourne had sold 70,900 admissions for $3.18 million by 22 July, six weeks of sessions gone, and The Odyssey is now the venue’s biggest film ever, ahead of Oppenheimer. It plays there into September. By 19 November the screen is clear, the crowd is warmed up, and Australians have spent a year proving they’ll queue at 6am for the right film on the right screen.
What Catching Fire teaches us about home media
Worth knowing before you decide whether one IMAX week is worth the trip: for the last film in this franchise that had an IMAX ratio shift, the cinema was the only reliable place to see it, and mostly still is.
The 2014 Blu-ray of Catching Fire reproduces the shift, opening from 2.40:1 to fill the frame as Katniss rises into the arena. The 4K UHD disc, released in 2016 and reissued since, does not. It’s locked at 2.40:1 throughout, a decision reviewers have been complaining about for a decade. The Netflix stream, oddly, does carry the shift, which puts the streaming version ahead of the premium disc on the one thing that made the film distinctive. And theatrical re-runs have been rare. London’s Science Museum ran an IMAX 70mm print for two sold-out sessions this February and March. In the US, Catching Fire is one night, 4 September, of Fathom’s five-film marathon ahead of the new film. No Australian cinema has announced anything equivalent, which is a shame, since the one projector in the country that could run that 70mm print is under a museum in Carlton. We’ve put the question to IMAX Melbourne.
The lesson for Sunrise on the Reaping: if it does turn out to have expanded sequences, don’t assume you’ll get them at home later.
Every IMAX screen in Australia
IMAX had one Australian location in 2022. There are ten now, six of them opened during 2025 alone.
Victoria has four: IMAX Melbourne in Carlton, Hoyts Melbourne Central, Hoyts Chadstone and Village Fountain Gate. New South Wales has two: IMAX Sydney at Darling Harbour, reopened in October 2023 after a seven-year rebuild, and Hoyts Blacktown. Western Australia has two: Event Cinemas Innaloo and Hoyts Carousel. Queensland has one, Event Cinemas Pacific Fair on the Gold Coast. The ACT has one, Dendy Canberra, open since December 2024.
Two of the ten are 1.43:1 rooms — the museum screen in Carlton, and IMAX Sydney, where EVT puts the screen at 692 square metres, 29 metres by 24. The other eight are IMAX with Laser installations at 1.90:1, the ratio most “expanded” scenes are mastered for. If an expanded ratio is ever confirmed for this film, that split is what decides which room shows you the most of it. Our July explainer works through that trade-off in detail.
Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart and Darwin have no IMAX. Brisbane’s South Bank IMAX closed two decades ago and Brisbane fans have been driving to Pacific Fair for The Odyssey; asked last month, EVT said it couldn’t confirm a Brisbane location but is looking. More screens are coming: Hoyts and IMAX announced in April that they would add ten IMAX with Laser locations across Australia and New Zealand, taking Hoyts from four sites to fourteen, with at least three opening before the end of 2026 and the rest through 2027 and 2028. None of the three has been named. EVT separately signed in 2025 for four more Australian systems, three due before the end of this year and one in 2027, also unnamed. If any of them opens before 19 November we’ll add it here.
If you’re in a state without IMAX, the biggest screen available will be the chains’ own premium formats: Vmax at Event and Village, and Xtremescreen at Hoyts. Whether the film gets 4DX or ScreenX versions here hasn’t been announced.
The global IMAX picture
Lionsgate is releasing the film day-and-date worldwide around 20 November, with Australia among the markets going a day early on the 19th. IMAX Corp has it as one of roughly twenty titles on its 2026 slate, and the Cliff Booth deal is global, so the same one-week window applies in the US and everywhere else, not just here. For Lionsgate that means losing IMAX screens the day before Thanksgiving, the biggest cinema weekend of the American year. Whether the studio negotiated any exception is not public.
Australia has opened ahead of the United States on every film in this franchise, and Mockingjay – Part 1 was the highest-grossing film in the country in 2014. What’s different this time is the footprint. With ten IMAX screens instead of one, this is the first Hunger Games release where most of the country can actually see it in the format rather than reading about the museum screen from interstate. The trade-off is that the format is more crowded than it has ever been.
Booking
Tickets aren’t on sale. Presale for the previous films opened roughly four to six weeks out, which points to October, and given the calendar above we’d expect IMAX sessions to be the first to go. When it happens, our AU release guide will carry direct booking links for every IMAX site and every chain. If you’re choosing between screens: the museum for scale, the newer Hoyts, Village and Event rooms for recliners and convenience.
We’ll update this article the moment IMAX Corp publishes the aspect-ratio and format details, and the moment any chain tells us how long the film is holding its IMAX screen.
Sources: IMAX Melbourne, in correspondence with THG Australia (13 August 2026) · IMAX Melbourne, The IMAX Difference · Official trailer, Lionsgate / IMAX · EVT: IMAX Sydney opening with laser, 1.43 aspect ratio · Netflix Tudum: Narnia moves to February 2027 · Variety: Cliff Booth takes the Thanksgiving IMAX slot · Deadline: Cliff Booth to open in IMAX 25 November · Screen Daily: Cliff Booth global IMAX release · Flicks: Dune: Part Three Australian release date · Screen Rant: Dune 3, Doomsday and the IMAX window · Variety: The Odyssey becomes IMAX’s biggest release · Axios: the 70mm sites that could play The Odyssey · ScreenHub: IMAX in Australia and the Brisbane question (22 July 2026) · IMAX Corp: Hoyts and IMAX expand partnership, ten new locations (29 April 2026) · EVT and IMAX: four new Australian locations · Canberra Times: Dendy Canberra IMAX opens · Box Office Pro: Village Cinemas Fountain Gate IMAX · Inverse: Francis Lawrence on shooting Catching Fire’s arena for IMAX · Home Theater Forum: Catching Fire 4K UHD review, aspect ratio locked at 2.40:1 · Pocket-lint: Netflix stream carries the aspect-ratio shift the 4K disc lacks · Science Museum London: Catching Fire in IMAX 70mm · Fathom Entertainment: five-film re-release, September 2026 · Inline photograph of The Ribbon, Darling Harbour: Maksym Kozlenko / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.
