Grab your popcorn. CinemaCon 2015 will have an Arkansas flavor.
The big event rolls later this month in Las Vegas, and CinemaCon is just what the name suggests: fanboy central for the movies.
This year, three Arkansas firms will have exhibits at the CinemaCon trade show: Power Technology Inc. of Alexander; Weldon Williams & Lick of Fort Smith; and Klipsch of Indianapolis and Hope.
The trade show part of CinemaCon runs April 21-23.
Power Technology, an Innovate Arkansas client firm, manufactures laser products including the new Illumina laser projection system that it hopes will change the way we see movies.
WWL is a leading “security printing” provider: custom tickets, parking permits, roll tickets (including the kind used at movie theaters) and more.
Klipsch, of course, is the legendary manufacturer of speakers launched in Hope in 1946. Its corporate headquarters has moved to Indianapolis, but its manufacturing remains based in Hope.
PTI will be there to market Illumina to movie projection manufacturers such as IMAX and theater owners. (More on that here.)
Jill Escol, a spokesperson for Klipsch, told us that the speaker giant has presented at CinemaCon for as long as she can remember. Klipsch provides audio for about half the theaters in the U.S., she said.
Meanwhile, no word from Williams Weldon & Lick, but our guess is that it provides many of the tickets that get torn in U.S. theaters.
Movies likely are headed down a path that leads to laser projection. Lasers provide more light, better pictures and are more efficient. Power Technology is hoping to be the company that brings laser projection to theaters worldwide. That journey starts later this month.
One day, movie-goers could hand the usher a ticket printed in Arkansas, and enter a cinema to watch a laser-projected movie delivered on technology created in Arkansas while listening to a soundtrack courtesy of speakers made in Arkansas.
Now, if we can just lure more filmmakers to Arkansas …