The manager of the IMAX told me they wanted to keep the movie and pair it with Transformers II...
How to the theaters "get" and "keep" movies, anyway? Do they "rent" them from the studios for a specific amount of time before returning them to the studio??
a lot of theatre groups contract for a specific amount of time for a movie at a time based on industry estimates.
some of the local regions may be able to have some differences.
after the initial contract period it is more open to the local theatre .
and then there are thing were a lot of the commercial imax are in one business group together no matter which theatre they are in.
they seem to contract movies together .
this is why so many only had star trek contracted for two weeks and transformers for a month.