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Clara Sieg found inspiration in birds. A venture capitalist with a history of backing consumer-facing brands, Sieg had been increasingly concerned with the consequences of drinking polluted water. So last year she founded a “perfectly pure” bottled water brand—one that draws water from a spring; purifies it to filter out microplastics, forever chemicals, lead, pesticides, and other contaminants; and sells it in slim glass bottles that are entirely polymer-free but for the thin lining inside their aluminum twist tops. She named her company Loonen because, she likes to explain, the presence of a loon serves as a signal that a lake ecosystem is healthy. “Researchers actually use [loons] as bio-indicators for water purity,” Sieg told the Feed Me newsletter writer Emily Sundberg in an interview last month.
In looking to avian welfare as a bellwether for human wellness, Sieg is following in the great tradition of Rachel Carson, whose landmark 1962 book Silent Spring raised the alarm about petrochemical-based pesticides by highlighting their role in the decline of robins, warblers, swallows, and, pointedly, bald eagles, an emblem of American freedom and ferocity. “Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of birds, and the early mornings, once filled with the beauty of bird song, are strangely silent,” Carson wrote in an oft-quoted passage.
But that’s where the similarities end. Carson’s poetic lament had such great emotional resonance that it led to the banning of the pesticide DDT and newfound public awareness about the importance of environmental protection. Sieg, though she speaks confidently about regulation of forever chemicals on wellness podcasts, is focused on moving cases of her prestige water brand. On Amazon, a pack of six 750 mL Loonen bottles—each equivalent to three 8-ounce glasses—sells for $35.
“We believe Loonen is part of the solution, not the whole solution,” Sieg tells Fast Company. “Water regulation and infrastructure is a big, hard problem, and changing it requires slow, structural work. We are a tiny team, and we are not under any illusion that we will fix the underlying system on our own.” Loonen, she says, is a way to deliver on the need for “practical solutions now.”
Microplastics, forever chemicals, lead: We live in a toxic world, Loonen suggests, and the only timely fix is to buy your way out. The company exemplifies a playbook befitting the current moment, in which consumer anxiety about wellness is at a fever pitch and government oversight of the water we drink and the air we breathe is at a new low. What better way to meet the moment than repackaging what should be a human right into a virtue-signaling luxury brand?
This new consumer model is relatively simple:
Identify an underregulated part of consumers’ lives, where invisible contaminants lurk. Create a “clean” product that reduces consumer exposure to said contaminants. Wrap the product in an aspirational brand. And lastly, disparage your competition as backward and unsafe. If you follow the playbook correctly, you’ll cash in. But often, nothing systemic will change. The dirty truth is that “adding to cart” is far easier, for consumers and for brands, than policy transformation of the kind that Carson’s allies once pursued.
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Christopher Nolan just fulfilled a lifelong dream, after daring IMAX to do something groundbreaking
The six-minute prologue to The Odyssey is a physical experience, especially when seen from director Christopher Nolan’s preferred spot. That’s the middle row of AMC’s IMAX theater at Universal CityWalk in Hollywood, where Nolan has been reviewing footage in early April as he finishes postproduction. With the 58-by-79-foot screen fully enveloping a viewer’s peripheral vision, waves crash and arrows thud with spine-rattling force.
The Odyssey, which Universal Pictures is releasing in theaters July 17, is the first feature film in which every scene is entirely shot with IMAX cameras—from Matt Damon’s Odysseus huddling inside the iconic Trojan horse to the iron-helmeted Greeks ambushing their foes. Nolan captured many of the moments using a new camera named “the Keighley,” which was designed to handle eye-widening spectacle and intimate dialogue with equal vividness. “We were able to get a lot of extremely intense, emotional scenes with this imaging capability, [which] we’ve never been able to do before,” says Nolan.
The quietest and most versatile camera IMAX has ever created, the Keighley (named after IMAX “chief quality guru” Patricia Keighley and her husband, David, IMAX’s longtime chief quality officer, who died last year) is designed to send Hollywood a message: This format isn’t just for stunts and docs anymore. IMAX is betting that the Keighley will unlock the appeal, and profits, of large-format film for a new generation of directors. It also may sweeten the deal for a potential suitor: IMAX is reportedly exploring a sale.
2025 was IMAX’s biggest year ever. Box-office revenue has generally lagged since the pandemic, but IMAX screenings generated a record $1.28 billion in ticket sales due to a varied output (Weapons, F1: The Movie, Zootopia 2), international films released locally (China’s Ne Zha 2), and zeitgeist-seizing fare like Sinners, which used IMAX cameras to capture its immersive time-span-crossing musical number. This year may be even bigger, with Project Hail Mary, Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil, and Dune: Part Three. Tickets for IMAX screenings of Dune: Part Three were being resold on eBay for $4,500 apiece in April—eight months before its December 18 release.
IMAX takes home 11% of the box-office haul from movies released or remastered in the IMAX format. (That amounted to $142 million in 2025, or more than a third of IMAX’s total revenue for that year; the other $268 million came mainly from sales, rentals, and maintenance on IMAX projection systems.) But IMAX sees movies filmed, not just screened, with its technology as an increasingly important part of its business model.
To earn the “Filmed for IMAX” certification—which studios can display in their marketing materials for movies like Supergirl and Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu—a film must be shot with IMAX-certified digital cameras (made by third parties like Arri and Sony) or IMAX’s own proprietary 65 mm film cameras. The latter have remained a rarefied tool, with directors from Michael Bay to Jordan Peele jockeying to deploy them for only their most eye-popping scenes.
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