IMAX’s Richard Gelfond entrepreneurial journey from shoeshiner to Hollywood mogul
Unabashed ‘chutzpah’ took Richard Gelfond from humble beginnings to the head of global entertainment giant IMAX, which has big plans for Australia.
One of American entrepreneur Richard Gelfond’s favourite sayings in life is: “It is never as good as it looks or as bad as it seems.”
“I try to remember that every day,” he says.
“When you run a business, it is easy to get excited on the one hand or negative on the other. So it is good to put boundaries on how people think and react and to create realistic expectations. So I’ve always tried to run our business like that.”
It is now 30 years since Gelfond joined global entertainment technology company IMAX as co-chairman after his firm, Cheviot Capital Advisors, and his business partner bought the company through a leveraged buyout. They took it public a few months later.
There are more than 1700 giant IMAX 3D screens worldwide spread across 80 countries, the biggest concentration being in North America and China, and a growing number of movie directors and film studios are using IMAX cameras.
In Australia, IMAX last year opened two new locations, on the Gold Coast and in Canberra, its largest single-year expansion in the market since 2008.
Australia delivered the Nasdaq-listed company more than $9m in box office takings in 2024, its highest-grossing year in the country since 2015. Its two existing IMAX locations in Australia, in Sydney and Melbourne, ranked among the top 10 IMAX locations worldwide for patronage.
The former’s screen is the fourth-biggest in the world, 40 per cent larger than the biggest at most multiplex theatres.
“I think we are actually at a pivot point in Australia. We are currently in negotiations with two fairly large [retail] chains about adding multiple IMAX theatres,” Gelfond says.
“So Australia is a country that is on the verge of really opening up for us right now.”
A year ago Gelfond said IMAX would open up to 40 screens in Australia, although he did not put a time frame on the rollout. Despite the slower than expected going, he is standing by the prediction.
“Every one of the theatres is towards the high end of successful theatres around the world and the population is at a set point. So we can do the math, and I think that’s quite realistic. I also think once we do a big deal with one of the existing players, it’s likely that others will come in,” he says.
The former lawyer and investment banker-turned Hollywood mogul’s strategic vision for IMAX is focusing on leveraging digital advancements to bolster the cinematic experience, while maintaining the company’s leadership in high-quality film presentation.
But it is also about accelerating its push beyond Hollywood movies into hosting more live events.
“We’ve recently developed a process where we can live stream into most of our IMAX theatres globally and in a very cost-effective way. With that technology in China, we launched the League of Legends final. We launched in North America the opening ceremony of the Olympics,” he says.
“At first IMAX was a movie company, but now we see it as a global platform to create events out of different kinds of content.”
IMAX is now using artificial intelligence to generate marketing materials, reducing the need for expensive outsourcing to ad agencies, and helping the firm make quicker decisions about movie scheduling and product flexibility.
It is also exploring ways to use AI for preventive maintenance by analysing real-time data from theatres worldwide to predict equipment failures and manage inventories
In the future, Gelfond sees AI playing a larger role in content creation and visual effects, particularly in collaboration with movie studios.
“We are working with Disney on the next Star Wars movie, The Mandalorian, which is coming out in 2026, and they’ve integrated IMAX into the production process with certain aspects of AI that I think will yield a better and more cost effective result,” he says.
But while it will enhance the production process, he believes AI will never replace human creativity in IMAX’s movies.
“Our kind of movies are larger than life, no pun intended,” he says. “So to have the imagination and the creative vision to do that, you are going to need human beings for a very long time.”
Proud of heritage
In 2004, Gelfond made his first ever visit to the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, a place of prayer and pilgrimage sacred to the Jewish people.
He has always been proud of his Jewish heritage, visiting Israel on five occasions during his life, although he stresses he is more “culturally than religiously” Jewish.
For centuries the Western Wall has been stuffed with small pieces of paper containing prayers, wishes and other messages from local worshippers and visiting pilgrims.
During his trip, Gelfond duly followed tradition and wrote his own note before placing it in a crevice between the stones.
“My note just said ‘Thank you’,” he reveals. “That’s the way I feel about [my life]. It’s just been an incredible life.”
Pressed on who he was thanking, he replies: “Nature, God, the universe, whatever. I just didn’t feel like I needed to wish for anything.”
The past few decades of Gelfond’s successful life in business rubbing shoulders with some of the richest and most famous people on earth have been in stark contrast to his childhood.
The Gelfonds, first-generation Americans of Jewish Ukrainian heritage, were poor and lived in a small Levitt-style house in Plainview, a Long Island suburb of New York. His father Leo hunched over a sewing machine all day stitching pelts.
“My father, at the high point of his career, made $US20,000 a year. As a kid, I couldn’t even go to the doctor because my father would say, ‘We can’t afford that’. So [now] having the reality of economic security is a good thing, there is no doubt about that,” Gelfond says.
His grandparents were both born in Ukraine when it was part of Russia, before they were driven out in the pogroms, or attacks on Jewish people, in 1917.
“I went back to that town and saw where they got married. I tried to touch base with that history, because I feel very strongly about heritage and history,” Gelfond says.
When his father was born, the family attempted to emigrate to either the US or Palestine, as it was called at that time. But they were stalled in Turkey for several years. His father later served in World War II, landing in Normandy before the famous D-Day invasion. In the army, he confronted chronic anti-Semitism.
“Given my father’s stories about the war and recent events rekindling it, it has definitely had an impact on me,” Gelfond says of the rise of anti-Semitism worldwide over the past year.
“It has really made me sad. I expected more from this world and I expected more from the United States, as well as other countries.
“I hope that we are now going to move in the right direction again.”
His daughter’s husband is now a journalist and the duo were, by chance, in the same room as then US president Joe Biden during the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attacks in 2023.
“My daughter went over to the president and said, ‘You know that I’m a Jew and I want to thank you for what you did’,” Gelfond says
“That made me extremely proud.”
His mother Sara knew from a young age that her son had something special known as chutzpah, which is Yiddish for unabashed nerve.
From a young age, Gelfond showed entrepreneurial spirit, starting with shining shoes when he was eight and then cutting lawns throughout his neighbourhood at the age of 12.
By sixteen, he was running his own newspaper with a circulation of 25,000, attracting national advertisers.
In high school he co-founded New York Ball, a sports newspaper, and sold subscriptions to large companies.
He later set up typesetting equipment in his parents’ basement, launched a dry-cleaning chain, and worked at a law firm and an investment bank before deciding to buy and run companies on his own.
He says the most important learning he applies to being a CEO from his time in the law and investment banking is to always learn the facts before you make a decision.
“Let’s say my head of distribution comes in and goes, ‘Oh my God, this is a disaster. Let’s do this, let’s do that’, he says.
“I always say, ‘Let’s take a breath, let’s get the facts,’ and I’ll consult my team. That way people can’t spin it or overly impact their own agenda.
“So I’d say the discipline that comes from being that kind of a professional really teaches you how to think things through in a very sort of quasi-objective way, and to do that in depth before you make a wrong decision.”
Mercury poisoning
Gelfond ate sushi twice a day for 20 years without ever thinking twice about any health consequences. Yet in 2006, he started feeling a loss of balance, fatigue and had trouble walking. He visited his doctor, who referred him to several specialists.
Eventually a neurologist tested him for mercury poisoning, which showed a blood mercury concentration 12 times higher than the safe level. “Now I’m happy to say it is a lot better, but I still have significant balance issues coming out of it,” he says.
In 2009 he started The Gelfond Fund to raise awareness of the issue among the general population and to help physicians diagnose mercury poisoning faster.
At the time he was heavily criticised by the seafood industry for blaming his condition on fish consumption. But so be it.
“It is a key to knowing me in both philanthropy and in business that I’m definitely not afraid to take on controversial subjects,” Gelfond says.
“One of the things I hate in business is when people are afraid to fight for change, because that’s the way it’s always been. Most people appreciate that trait in me. Yes, you do get some critics along the way, but nobody is going to love you all the time.”
Gelfond married his second wife, Peggy Bonapace, a fellow divorcee, in Brooklyn in September 2010.
They were married on Ellis Island, where his father spent a month after arriving from Russia (Gelfond was two years old) while the authorities decided whether to let him into America.
Gelfond and Peggy now have an eclectic group of friends, including famed US broadcaster Howard Stern, who has a neighbouring holiday house in The Hamptons.
Having just turned 70, Gelfond worries at times that wealth has changed him as a person.
“It is hard not to be changed,” he muses, before adding he still has many friends from high school.
He also notes that while his father sewed coats for a living, Peggy’s wife was knife sharpener.
“That is a big thing we had in common and it has been important to both of us not to lose touch with how we grew up,” he says.
But what makes him happiest is that that philosophy has carried through to his two children and four grandchildren.
“They grew up, certainly, with a lot more than I had and both my kids have worked full-time to raise their families,” he says.
“They don’t feel entitled to anything. That is probably one of my proudest accomplishments.”
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