Sep 15, 2016 04:23 PM EST

IMAX VR to Bring New Movie Experience to Theaters

Virtual reality is slowly becoming a part of our movie going experience. IMAX has announced that they plan on creating IMAX VR theaters, which they believe is the next step in an immersive experience.

IMAX Entertainment head Greg Foster spoke about it at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference in Los Angeles, making these points (via THR):

*Six pilot VR locations will be open by the end of 2016
*Moviegoers will be able to put on VR glasses and view the immersive cinema-like VR experiences.
*The VR experiences will be "six- to nine-minute content stories, fully separate and you buy that ticket as well or buy it bundled with the IMAX movie presentation" of a film.
*The first IMAX VR location is set to be Los Angeles, although the exact location was not stated.
*They expect to open future VR theaters in China in conjunction with their IMAX locations.
*The plan is to "grow them as fast as we can."

With people already paying a premium price for 3D films, most likely they will also pay extra (probably somewhere around $30) for a VR experience. However, will it be so pricey that folks may only want to do it one or two times to check it out and then never do it again? It will be interesting to see how popular this actually becomes.