The Duluth Omnimax Theatre in Duluth, Minnesota will closed the first week of March 2011, according to an article in the Duluth News-Tribune:

Dan Russell, executive director of the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center, said the Omnimax Theatre has been losing money for months, prompting the DECC’s board of directors not to renew a 15-year lease of IMAX projection equipment that expires in April.

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The February 3, 2011 article goes on to mention that Marcus Theatres may be interested in the space, given that the Marcus Duluth 10 is located in the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center as well. FOX 21 News reported on February 2, 2011 that a prospective tenant was looking over the space to consider the cost of renovations and mentioned Marcus Theatres by name.

The theater is an IMAX Dome design, which means that it projected the large IMAX film onto the inside of a spherical dome that starts at the floor in front of the audience and reaches up, over, and around the viewers. While this approach surrounds the audience with imagery, it requires that the film have been created using a compatible lens to avoid image distortion (very few films were created in this OMNIMAX format). According to a post on cinematreasures.org from November 2008, the theater opened in 1996 and saw some initial success, but the director of the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center was already predicting its death when the lease expired in 2011.

After the theater closes, audiences will have to travel to the Omnitheater - Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul to see such documentaries as Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs. Be sure to pack a lunch, because the trip clocks in at over two and a half hours!