The Dog Stars: IMAX Wins While Cinema Waits for Extinction

Lede

As The Dog Stars started, I found myself thinking less about the apocalypse on the screen and more about cinema’s technological problem.

Hermit Off Script

As The Dog Stars started, I found myself thinking less about the apocalypse on the screen and more about the technology around it. Cinema feels behind again. Not IMAX itself – that is still the reason I bother leaving the house for some films – but the strange idea that a cinema can have one spectacular room and several ordinary screens that are supposed to compete with increasingly good televisions, home sound systems and whatever eventually replaces today’s bulky spatial headsets.
All cinema screens should be moving towards IMAX-level ambition in size, picture and especially sound. They don’t have to be literally identical IMAX rooms, obviously, but the difference between the premium auditorium and the ordinary one shouldn’t feel like travelling backwards through technological history. As glasses become lighter, sharper and more comfortable, cinema will have an even bigger problem. Today’s spatial headsets are still expensive contraptions strapped to your face, but technology has an irritating habit of becoming smaller, cheaper and better while established industries explain why everything is fine.
The movie itself was OK, as apocalyptic movies go. Humanity gets another opportunity to destroy civilisation, this time after a deadly flu pandemic rather than the compulsory zombie outbreak. Zombies aren’t really necessary anyway. Turn the world upside down, remove law, food and security, and apparently ordinary humans can handle the animal department perfectly well themselves.
With Ridley Scott directing and Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin and the rest of that cast, I was going to see it. It didn’t disappoint. At least not from my IMAX seat. The story is familiar territory, but Scott still knows how to make ruined civilisation look properly large.
The other thing amused me more. The internet is drowning in AI doom. Every week somebody announces that artificial intelligence will remove every job, overthrow humanity, become God, make us immortal or kill us before breakfast. Yet cinema still reaches comfortably for viruses, environmental disasters, wars and the usual civilisation-ending cupboard.
Maybe AI apocalypse has become too ordinary for fiction. Why make a two-hour film about it when a doom content creator can apparently end civilisation three times before lunch?

P.S. Maybe the more interesting science-fiction story is happening outside the film. One day the threat to cinema may not be AI writing movies at all. It may simply be a pair of lightweight glasses putting a virtual IMAX-sized screen in front of your eyes while the local multiplex is still charging extra for the only auditorium worth leaving home to visit.

The Dog Stars | Official Trailer

Movie synopsis

Set in 2035 after a deadly flu pandemic has devastated the world’s population, The Dog Stars follows Hig, a pilot surviving in isolation with military survivalist Bangley. Their harsh but controlled existence is disturbed when Hig receives a mysterious radio transmission. Believing it may lead to other survivors and something resembling ordinary human connection, he leaves the relative safety of their home and ventures into an uncertain world where survival has made trust almost as scarce as supplies. The film is adapted from Peter Heller’s novel. [20th Century Studios] [Walt Disney Company]

Cast and credits

Director: Ridley Scott
Writers: Mark L. Smith, screenplay; based upon the novel by Peter Heller
Genre: Post-apocalyptic science-fiction thriller
Main cast: Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley, Guy Pearce, Benedict Wong, Allison Janney
Composer: Harry Gregson-Williams
Production company/studio: 20th Century Studios, Scott Free Productions
Runtime: 118 minutes
Release year and platform: 2026; theatrical release, including IMAX. UK cinema release from 26 August 2026; US release from 28 August 2026. [20th Century Studios] [Disney UK] [IMDb]

What does not make sense

• Cinemas complain about competition from home entertainment while still treating their best picture and sound as a premium exception rather than the standard they should be chasing.
• The ordinary auditorium is being asked to compete with televisions, streaming libraries and increasingly sophisticated head-mounted displays while offering roughly the same basic proposition it offered decades ago: a screen, seats and expensive snacks.
• Apocalypse cinema repeatedly destroys civilisation with viruses, wars and catastrophes, yet the current cultural obsession with AI extinction remains far louder on YouTube thumbnails than on cinema screens.
• Humanity apparently needs zombies in some films to become savage even though removing food, law and electricity usually seems sufficient.
• IMAX demonstrates that audiences will still pay for cinema when cinema provides something difficult to reproduce at home. The industry’s answer is still to make that experience available in only a fraction of rooms.
• If the future eventually puts a convincing giant virtual screen into lightweight glasses, “our screen is bigger than your television” stops being much of a business strategy.

Sense check / The numbers

1. The Dog Stars runs for 118 minutes. Disney announced its UK cinema opening for 26 August 2026, while 20th Century Studios lists the US release as 28 August 2026. [Disney UK] [20th Century Studios]
2. The film takes place in 2035, after a deadly flu pandemic, while Peter Heller’s original The Dog Stars ebook was published on 7 August 2012. Hollywood’s future apocalypse therefore began life on the page 14 years before Ridley Scott put it on the giant screen. [Walt Disney Company] [Penguin Random House]
3. UK cinema admissions fell from 176.1 million in 2019 to 123.5 million in 2025, a drop of about 30 per cent. Cinema isn’t extinct, but neither is the audience behaving as though nothing changed. [UK Cinema Association]
4. IMAX finished 2025 with 1,864 systems across 91 countries and territories. It represented less than 1 per cent of screens worldwide but captured 3.8 per cent of global box office. The premium room is doing considerably more work than its screen count suggests. [IMAX]
5. Apple’s current Vision Pro uses 23 million pixels, micro-OLED displays and refresh rates up to 120 Hz. It is still a headset rather than the light pair of glasses I am imagining, but the direction of travel is already strapped rather conspicuously to somebody’s face. [Apple]

The sketch

Scene 1: The premium survivor
An almost empty IMAX auditorium shows The Dog Stars on a huge screen while one viewer sits among rows of empty seats.
Dialogue:
Viewer: “Can all screens improve?”
Cinema: “Premium upgrade.”
Viewer: “IMAX still has the argument.”

Scene 2: The next home cinema
A viewer wearing futuristic glasses sits at home with his dog while a giant virtual screen fills the wall with a ruined city.
Dialogue:
Cinema: “My screen is bigger.”
Viewer: “Which screen?”
Dog: “Good question.”

Scene 3: The missing apocalypse
An AI doom creator broadcasts warnings from a desk covered in screens while a studio executive calmly presents another virus-apocalypse film poster.
Dialogue:
Doom creator: “AI ends humanity!”
Studio: “We’re using flu.”
AI: “Too realistic?”

What to watch, not the show

• Premium large-format investment. IMAX’s numbers suggest audiences still value cinema when the experience is genuinely difficult to reproduce elsewhere.
• Ordinary auditorium upgrades. Picture quality matters, but sound may remain cinema’s strongest advantage if operators actually maintain and improve it.
• Spatial displays becoming lighter, cheaper and socially acceptable. The real cinema threat begins when wearing them stops feeling like borrowing equipment from a laboratory.
• Streaming windows getting shorter or more attractive. A mediocre cinema experience becomes harder to justify when the same film eventually arrives in a comfortable living room.
• AI doom as an attention economy. Catastrophe predictions produce clicks whether or not the catastrophe arrives.
• Apocalypse fatigue. Viruses, zombies, environmental collapse and social breakdown have become familiar enough that the end of civilisation now needs good direction merely to avoid feeling routine.

The Hermit take

The Dog Stars proves the apocalypse can still justify an IMAX ticket.
Cinema’s real survival problem begins outside the IMAX door.

Keep or toss

Verdict: Keep / Toss.

Keep Ridley Scott, the cast, the scale and the IMAX experience.
Toss the assumption that ordinary cinema can stand still while everything around it keeps improving.

Sources

• 20th Century Studios – The Dog Stars https://www.20thcenturystudios.com/movies/the-dog-stars
• Disney UK Press – The Dog Stars https://press.disney.co.uk/news/final-trailer-for-visionary-director-ridley-scotts-the-dog-stars-available-now
• The Walt Disney Company – The Dog Stars https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/news/the-dog-stars/
• IMDb – The Dog Stars full cast and crew https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21285562/fullcredits/
• IMDb – The Dog Stars company credits https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21285562/companycredits/
• Penguin Random House – The Dog Stars by Peter Heller https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/219374/the-dog-stars-by-peter-heller/9780307960931/
• UK Cinema Association – Annual cinema admissions https://www.cinemauk.org.uk/the-industry/facts-and-figures/uk-cinema-admissions-and-box-office/annual-admissions/
• IMAX – 2025 Annual Report https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/921582/000162828026011770/imax-20251231.htm
• Apple – Apple Vision Pro technical specifications https://support.apple.com/en-gb/125436