Will you be able to see Sunrise on the Reaping in IMAX in Australia?

The short version: The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping opens at IMAX Melbourne on Thursday 19 November, presented in IMAX 4K Laser Digital. It’s not a 70mm presentation and it carries no Filmed for IMAX credential. But the marketing points to an expanded 1.90:1 aspect ratio for at least part of the film — and if that holds, the biggest screen in the country isn’t necessarily the one that shows you the most of it.

This piece is live and will be updated. We’ve approached IMAX for confirmation on the aspect ratio and will publish their answer here.

What’s actually confirmed

IMAX named Sunrise on the Reaping as part of its 2026 slate in October 2025, alongside Avengers: Doomsday, The Odyssey and Super Mario Movie 2. Lionsgate’s marketing has carried the “in theatres and IMAX” tag since the first teaser dropped on 20 November 2025, a year out from the US release.

IMAX Melbourne carries the film on its schedule, opening Thursday 19 November — matching Roadshow’s national date, a day ahead of the US — with the presentation specified as IMAX 4K Laser Digital. As of publication there’s no ticketing link, so it’s scheduled but not on sale. IMAX Sydney appears in Event Cinemas’ venue list for the title, though we’re still confirming whether that’s a locked assignment or a default listing.

No other Australian IMAX site has published a date. Expect the rest of the network to firm up with the on-sale, likely around September.

What “IMAX 4K Laser Digital” means — and the aspect ratio question

The format string tells us two things definitively.

It rules out 70mm film. IMAX Melbourne holds the only 15/70mm projector in Australia and bills those presentations separately — Dune: Part Three in December is explicitly an IMAX 70mm Film Presentation. Sunrise is the dual 4K laser system.

It rules out a Filmed for IMAX credential. IMAX Melbourne tags those in capitals; Resident Evil, Street Fighter and Godzilla Minus Zero all carry FILMED FOR IMAX on the current schedule. Sunrise doesn’t, and it isn’t on IMAX’s 2026 Filmed for IMAX slate.

But the film does appear to carry an expanded 1.90:1 ratio, and that’s the headline.

The evidence is in the marketing itself. The IMAX-branded trailer shifts aspect ratio partway through — a change that happens inside the asset rather than across it, which is the distinction that matters. A trailer simply reformatted for IMAX playback would sit at one ratio throughout. A shift mid-trailer means the source material exists in two.

It’s also a deliberate callback. Francis Lawrence did exactly this in Catching Fire in 2013, shooting the arena sequences with IMAX cameras so the frame physically opened up the moment Katniss was lifted into the Quarter Quell. Doing it again for Haymitch’s Quell is the kind of rhyme this franchise has always been good at, and it suggests the expansion is tied to the arena rather than applied across the whole film.

What we don’t yet know, and are asking IMAX: whether the expansion runs throughout or is reserved for specific sequences, and whether every IMAX site receives the expanded version. Treat 1.90:1 as strongly indicated, not confirmed, until someone official says so.

Where to book, if the expanded ratio is real

This is the part that will trip most coverage up, so it’s worth being precise.

An expanded ratio of 1.90:1 is the native shape of the commercial IMAX with Laser screens — Hoyts Chadstone, Hoyts Melbourne Central, Hoyts Carousel, Hoyts Blacktown and Event Cinemas Pacific Fair. On those screens, the expanded sequences fill the auditorium edge to edge, top to bottom. Nothing wasted.

IMAX Melbourne and IMAX Sydney are 1.43:1 rooms. A 1.90:1 image fills their width but leaves the top and bottom of the screen unused. Counterintuitively, the two biggest screens in the country are the two that won’t display this film’s full frame.

That does not make them the wrong choice. Melbourne’s screen is roughly 32 metres wide — the largest 1.43:1 screen in the world — so even letterboxed, the image is substantially larger than anything at a multiplex, with better light output and a superior sound package. If you want the biggest picture, go to Melbourne or Sydney. If you want the fullest frame, with no unused screen, go to a 1.90 laser house.

Both are defensible. Just know which one you’re buying.

What Australia actually has

The Australian IMAX network has roughly doubled in two years, and it’s worth understanding the split, because “IMAX” covers two quite different experiences here.

The 1.43:1 giant-screen venues — the ones that can display the tallest image, and the only two in the country:

• IMAX Melbourne, at Melbourne Museum in Carlton. Screen measures approximately 32 metres wide, currently the largest 1.43:1 cinema screen in the world. It runs IMAX Laser and is also home to Australia’s only 15/70mm film projector.
• IMAX Sydney, in The Ribbon at Darling Harbour, operated by EVT. Around 692m² of screen at 1.43:1, reopened in October 2023 and has consistently ranked inside IMAX’s global top five locations since.

The IMAX with Laser multiplex screens at 1.90:1, which have arrived quickly:

• Event Cinemas Pacific Fair, Gold Coast (opened December 2024)
• Hoyts Chadstone, Melbourne (November 2025)
• Hoyts Melbourne Central, Hoyts Carousel in Perth, and Hoyts Blacktown in Sydney (all December 2025)

And there’s more coming. In April 2026, Hoyts and IMAX expanded their partnership from four locations to fourteen over the next two years, with at least three new sites opening before the end of 2026. EVT separately signed for four more Australian systems, three of which are due before the end of this year. A Village Cinemas site at Fountain Gate has also been flagged. Any of those could theoretically come online in time for November — but none has been publicly dated, so don’t plan around them.

If you’re outside Sydney, Melbourne, Perth or the Gold Coast, there is currently no IMAX screen in your capital. Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra, Hobart and Darwin have none. That is the single most useful thing in this article for a lot of readers, and it’s the thing nobody says plainly.

Why IMAX is taking Australia seriously

Worth knowing, because it explains the build-out and it’s a genuine point of national pride in exhibition terms.

Australia delivered a record A$18.6 million at the IMAX box office in 2025. In 2024 it was the top market in the world by per-screen average, at close to $4.5 million per screen — the next best market managed just over $2.4 million. As of 2026 Australia sits ninth overall as an IMAX market, with three local sites inside the global top thirty, Hoyts Chadstone among them. On a per-head basis, Australians turn up for premium large format more reliably than almost anyone.

For a franchise with this much local affection, that’s a reasonable argument for Roadshow programming the film widely across the network. It’s an argument, not a confirmation.

What we’d do

If the expanded ratio is confirmed and you care about seeing the film exactly as framed, book a 1.90 laser house — Chadstone, Melbourne Central, Blacktown, Carousel or Pacific Fair — and you’ll get the arena sequences filling the whole screen.

If you want scale over completeness, IMAX Melbourne remains the best room in the country and it isn’t close. Get on their mailing list now; the Dune: Part Three presale sold out before most people knew it existed, and Sunrise will move the same way.

Sydney readers: hold until IMAX Sydney’s listing firms up rather than booking a multiplex early.

And if a preview session is announced, book it the hour it goes live. The Songbirds and Snakes on-sale in 2023 moved faster in premium formats than in general admission, and there are considerably more Hunger Games readers in this country now than there were then.