Ann Sommerlath has joined IMAX Corporation [1] as vice-president corporate communications, with responsibility for leading IMAX’s media initiatives and driving overall communications strategy.
Recently a senior vice-president at Edelman Public Relations [2], where she served as senior media strategist and developed strategic communications programs for a range of clients, Sommerlath reports directly to Richard Gelfond, IMAX’s CEO.
Sommerlath has nearly 20 years of experience, which includes leadership positions in corporate and financial communications, as well as financial journalism.
Prior to Edelman, she was senior v-p in the corporate and business-to-business communications group at Fleishman-Hillard [3] in New York and was a managing director at RF|Binder Partners Inc. [4], focused primarily on investor relations. She has also been director of PR/communications at LSG Sky Chefs [5], the Frankfurt-based catering subsidiary of German airline, Lufthansa AG [6], and she worked as a financial journalist for 10 years at Dow Jones Newswires [7], BridgeNews and the Associated Press [8].
IMAX recently announced that it had made an agreement with Cinemark Holdings Inc. [9] for Cinemark to acquire two new digital IMAX theatre systems in Cinemark complexes located in Lancaster, California, and Corpus Christi, Texas. Both theatres are expected to open by April, 2011. In addition to adding two new sites, Cinemark will upgrade all six of its film-based IMAX locations to IMAX digital theatres, also planned for completion by Apr./11.
The companies also announced that they have amicably resolved their respective litigation claims against each other. As a result, all claims and counterclaims in the patent litigation in Texas and contract litigation in New York are being dismissed with prejudice. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
As of Sept. 30/10, there were 470 IMAX theatres (348 commercial and 122 institutional) operating in 45 countries.