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Mission: Impossible Gets Early IMAX Release

’Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol.’

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol already has a punctuation-crowded title, and now it can add some asterisks to its opening weekend. Director Brad Bird says he’s finalizing plans to open the Mission Impossible sequel five days early in 200 IMAX theaters (as well as “a smaller number of ‘prestige’ movie palaces”), which means the movie will get the jump on its regular December 21 release date in locations that are primed to show it off to its best advantage. Still, the unprecedented strategy was hard-won, says Bird: “Man, when you try to change things in the film industry, they do not want to deviate from what the well-worn paths are,” the director told Hero Complex. “Every studio likes to have bragging rights to the biggest opening numbers … But to me that is an intellectual thing. The average viewer doesn’t experience how much money is made on opening weekend. What they experience is their experience.” And in their experience, Tom Cruise and Jeremy Renner are suddenly going to be really, really tall. [Hero Complex/LAT]

Mission: Impossible Gets Early IMAX Release