PEORIA, Ill. – A well-visited portion of the Peoria Riverfront Museum has just undergone $350,000 worth of upgrades.
“A 21-speaker Dolby Surround Sound system, which is the greatest of its kind available to any movie theater in the country right now, (and) dual 36,000 lumen laser light engines. That’s a fancy way of saying super bright projectors, and super high definition,” said John Morris, CEO, Peoria Riverfront Museum.
Morris Tuesday was showing off and talking about the upgrades to the Giant Screen Theater. He says the work was paid for through members and through Pearl Technologies, which installed the system.
Morris expects the new system could pay for itself within ten years, given what it costs every year to even just replace old-school projection lamps.
There might still be people in the community who claim they were promised an “IMAX” screen when the Peoria Riverfront Museum first opened up a decade ago.
The Giant Screen Theatre, you might say, while not an IMAX, is close enough. Morris agrees.
“IMAX controls the content, when you have an IMAX-branded theater. We want to control the content. We’re the Peoria Riverfront Museum,” said Morris. “If we want to do kids pics, do independent, art films, you want to do ducks,” Morris said, he can.
Plus, Morris says the screen is larger than a circular IMAX screen, but can show the vast majority of IMAX films anyway.
The most recent example of the Giant Screen Theater’s versatility is being able to continues its “Art of Film” series, while also hosting three sold-out showings of the film made of Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour.”
Morris says the Giant Screen Theater is thought to be the largest museum society film screen in America.
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