Fans Spend $500 to See Nolan's 'The Odyssey' in IMAX 70mm as Tickets Sell Out

Q: Is Christopher Nolan's vision creating a demand that the film industry is physically incapable of meeting?

Yes. Nolan’s success with *The Odyssey* shows demand for true Imax 70mm is currently greater than the industry can physically supply. The clearest evidence is capacity. Only 25 U.S. theaters and 41 worldwide can show *The Odyssey* in Imax 70mm, the format Nolan has promoted as the ideal way to see it and the one in which the film was shot entirely. Those screenings sold out for months in major cities, with theaters adding 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. shows, fans traveling long distances, and resale prices soaring. Imax 70mm alone contributed $51.8 million to the film’s opening, an outsized return from a tiny number of screens. The bottleneck is not just popularity; it is infrastructure. Imax has said it has not manufactured new 70mm projectors in roughly 50 years. Expansion depends on refurbishing old machines, finding obsolete parts, and training projectionists in a skill that largely faded after the industry’s shift to digital. For *The Odyssey*, Imax increased the number of 70mm locations from 30 for *Oppenheimer* to 41, but that still leaves supply far below demand. There are also practical limits on how long the format can be devoted to one film. Upcoming Imax releases and a December commitment to *Dune: Part Three* mean *The Odyssey* cannot occupy those screens continuously, even if audiences would support it. So the industry can meet demand for the movie broadly, through digital Imax and other premium formats. It cannot yet meet demand for Nolan’s preferred version at scale.

3 articles · Updated · Bloomberg · Jul 22

$500 is what El Paso teacher Sergio Estrada spent to watch 'The Odyssey' in IMAX 70mm, driving demand beyond ticket prices as fans travel long distances for the format.
4 tickets bought a year in advance cost him about $80, but gas and an Airbnb pushed the trip to roughly $500 because the nearest screening was in Tempe, Arizona.
34-year-old Estrada said missing 'Interstellar' in the giant-film format more than a decade ago drove the splurge, underscoring Nolan fans' preference for seeing the movie as intended.
IMAX 70mm seats have been scarce: new tickets sold out within hours in New York, Los Angeles and London, with some screenings unavailable into mid-August and early September.