The screen is the anchor.
Moana opened on July 10. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey follows on July 17. Spider-Man: Brand New Day lands on July 31. Three of July's most recognizable releases arrive within 21 days, and all three will play through mall-based cinema networks worldwide. Select IMAX 70mm opening shows for The Odyssey sold out after Universal put tickets on sale a full year before the premiere. Simon Property Group owns several of the few American screens that can show them. NEPI Rockcastle is writing a cinema into the largest project in its pipeline.
The story is not that three films create three traffic spikes. The story is where that traffic concentrates. Studios create the event. Malls control the scarce screen that turns it into traffic.
On malls.com: The rarest screens in cinema have addresses, and most of them are located in malls. Read the full article: IMAX 70mm theaters in malls: where America’s rarest screens are.
One film turned the screen into scarce inventory.
The Odyssey is the first feature shot entirely with IMAX cameras. Universal began selling tickets for select IMAX 70mm screenings on July 17, 2025, one year ahead of the premiere, and roughly half of the participating US theaters sold out their opening allocations within 12 hours.
The reason that worked is scarcity. Only 23 theaters in the United States can run the 70mm print, 38 worldwide, according to the venue list compiled by Engadget. And about half of the American venues sit inside shopping centers, including four Simon properties: King of Prussia, Opry Mills, Mall of Georgia and Arizona Mills.
That changes what the buyer is choosing. A customer who books a specific screen in a specific building a year in advance is not comparing showtimes. He is planning a trip around infrastructure that exists in a handful of catchments. The ticket is for the film. The trip is for the screen.
Three release dates are three scheduled traffic events.
Westfield Century City.
Moana posted 43 million dollars domestically in its opening weekend, one of the softest starts among Disney's live-action remakes, per Deadline. That number matters less to a landlord than it does to Disney. What the landlord gets from the release calendar is advance notice: three dates in one month when peak demand arrives on schedule, bookable against atrium activations, themed food and beverage, family programming and tenant cross-promotions.
Studios have started treating the property itself as campaign media. Ahead of The Odyssey's premiere, the AMC Plaza facade at Westfield Century City was wrapped in a large-format installation for the film, produced with NBCUniversal and AMC Theatres, according to the agency that delivered the campaign. The landlord's surfaces carried the studio's launch.
Moana's soft opening sharpens the argument rather than weakening it. When the film alone does not guarantee the visit, demand concentrates where the format does. A release calendar becomes a retail calendar.
Operators are underwriting the format again.
Promenada Bucharest.
NEPI Rockcastle's 300 million euro extension of Promenada Bucharest, the largest project in the company's pipeline, doubles the mall's retail space and places a major new cinema and a theatre in the anchor line-up alongside a gym and a science museum, with opening targeted for April 2027, per the company's own project update.
The underwriting context is visible in the top line: the US domestic box office reached 4.66 billion dollars by mid-2026, running 21 percent ahead of the 2025 pace, according to TheWrap. A format that spent years justifying its rent through co-tenancy alone is generating destination demand again, and the operators writing the largest checks in Europe are planning around it.
When a cinema makes it into a 300 million euro anchor plan, the format has passed underwriting.
What we're watching
→ VOX Cinemas at Diriyah Square. Majid Al Futtaim is building a multiplex of roughly 7,600 square meters inside Riyadh's 400-brand lifestyle district, per Diriyah Company. Premium screens as day-one anchor tenancy, not retrofit.
→ Sherman Oaks Galleria. Regal is adding IMAX and premium seating at a location that was at closure risk during the chain's 2023 bankruptcy, per TheWrap. Reinvestment is landing exactly where the format concentrates demand.
→ American Dream, World Cup final July 19. Dream Fan Fest turns a broadcast date into an on-site event. Watching first-week attribution data for the sports version of the same mechanic.
Moana opened on July 10. The Odyssey follows on July 17. Spider-Man arrives on July 31. The releases are three dates. The infrastructure remains.
It is the screen audiences cannot reproduce at home, the facade a studio can buy as media and the cinema that earns a place in a 300 million euro anchor plan. The leasing question is no longer only how much space a cinema occupies. It is how much destination demand its format can concentrate.
The film creates demand. The screen decides which mall gets it.
Mati Brooks,
Editor, Malls Money
Malls.com tracks malls, brands, store openings, and retail expansion signals across 50+ countries.
Download the report → Brand Expansion Signals 2026.