Cosm bets on domed screens as premium cinema grows

Cosm, an immersive entertainment technology company, is expanding its footprint and its content library as the theatrical industry sees its biggest growth from premium large format, or PLF, tickets. The company began by programming planetariums — its name combines “cosmos” and “colosseum” — and now uses massive domed screens to mimic courtside seats at sports venues and to drop film fans into Hollywood sets.

Since 2024, Cosm has opened four theaters near Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta and Detroit, with a Cleveland hub set to open in 2027. Showings often sell out, according to Cosm. The venues have drawn sports fans who watch live matchups in an arena-like environment.

More recently, Cosm has partnered with studios including Warner Bros., now part of Skydance, to bring films such as “The Matrix,” “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” and “It” to its locations. Cosm recently signed a deal with Universal that will bring “Shrek” to its domes in December.

Tickets cost from $18 for a matinee to around $70 for prime seats or in-demand showings, not including concessions or themed menu items. Sony invested $100 million in the privately held company in June, taking a minority stake and placing Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman and CEO Ravi Ahuja on its board. Cosm’s other investors include chairman Steve Winn’s Mirasol Capital; former Milwaukee Bucks co-owner Marc Lasry’s Avenue Sports Fund; Rocket Mortgage co-founder Dan Gilbert’s Rock; and David Blitzer, managing partner of the New Jersey Devils and Philadelphia 76ers, through his firm Bolt Ventures.

“Cosm is really early in its growth trajectory at the moment, and we saw an opportunity to partner with the company at, what I would say is at, a very important stage in its development,” Jay Levine, chief strategy and business operations officer at Sony, told CNBC. “They have about five locations with the goal of a pretty significant rollout. And the real reason why we did it was it gave us a lot of exposure to a growing distribution and what we deem an experiential platform that we think has long-term potential.”

Sony bought Alamo Drafthouse in 2024 and entered a long-term lease to reopen and restore the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles in July of this year. “Our experiences strategy is around tech, it’s around fandom, and it’s around new and innovative approaches to content distribution,” Levine said. “For us, we’re all about these differentiated experiences.”

What sets Cosm apart

Cosm’s 87-foot-diameter, concave screens place viewers in the middle of the action, whether an NFL game or the world of “The Matrix.” The forthcoming Cleveland location will have a 100-foot-diameter dome. The experience is akin to that of the Sphere in Las Vegas, which has drawn headlines since opening in 2023. “People absolutely love to live out what they love in fandom, just like wearing a sports jersey,” Alexis Scalice, head of Cosm Studios, told CNBC. “And I love that I’m seeing that same behavior happen with cinema.”

Stadium-style seating sits within each dome, with booths and tables on each level. The dome’s width fills much of the viewer’s periphery. The Los Angeles and Dallas locations hold around 350 seats each, while the newer Atlanta and Detroit domes have up to 500. Cosm has not said how many seats Cleveland will have, but the larger screen is expected to mean more seats.

For live sports, specialty cameras mounted in arenas broadcast back to the dome, creating the illusion of being on the field. For films, the movie plays in a large rectangle at the center of the dome while the background is transformed to extend the scene. In “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” during the scene where thousands of Hogwarts acceptance letters flood through the fireplace, the background swarms with animated envelopes.

Cosm has partnered with experiential production company Little Cinema and creative studio MakeMake to create visuals and environments for each scene. From storyboarding to post-production, the process can take up to a year. “We really work hard not to take away from the story, so the film remains the hero in the narrative,” Scalice said. “Working very closely with Warner Bros. and our creative partners to make sure that we’re not detracting too much from the story, but we’re enhancing those moments for more elevated emotional response.”

With the exception of “It,” released in 2017, Cosm’s theatrical offerings so far have been films released decades ago with long-established fan bases. That helps Cosm leverage what Scalice called “that nostalgia factor” — “parents coming in that … grew up on this, and they want to share it with their children.” “We can reinvigorate these legendary films,” she added.

Cosm has dabbled across genres — horror, fantasy, science fiction — and demographics, from family-friendly to R-rated. “Shrek,” set to debut Dec. 16, will be its first foray into animation. “The thing that’s so incredible about it is everybody thought initially it’s just going to be working for sports, and when you look at what they’ve done, a lot of the titles with ‘Harry Potter,’ with ‘Shrek,’ and some of the other ones, I mean, the fill rates are actually incredible,” Levine said.

The future is premium

Studios and exhibitors are looking for innovative ways to showcase Hollywood’s product as shifts in viewing habits disrupt the business. In the post-pandemic era, the cinema space has been defined by fewer screens and fewer moviegoers, but those declines have been masked by higher ticket prices, particularly for PLF experiences such as Imax, Dolby Cinema, ScreenX and 4DX.