Only 39 IMAX theaters worldwide, the best known in Europe being London’s BFI IMAX, are equipped to show Christopher Nolan’s “Odyssey” using the IMAX film print and the 70mm format the movie was shot on.
In practice, that means the prints require specialized projection equipment and enormous reels to carry and screen an 18 kilometer strip of film (IMAX 70mm runs through roughly 102 meters a minute), a luxury very few cinemas around the world can offer.
The director’s famously grand vision for “Odyssey” may be a headache for theater owners and distributors given these screening requirements, but these days that’s largely solved through digital projection and IMAX With Laser (4K laser projection with multichannel sound). Most viewers worldwide, including those at Greece’s only two IMAX screens, one at Village@The Mall Athens and one at Village Cinemas@Mediterranean Cosmos in Thessaloniki, will see the epic through this technology.
Everyone else can take buses, boats, trains, or planes to reach one of the few theaters worldwide (24 in the US have the necessary gear) still showing “Odyssey” on 70mm film, exactly as its creator shot and envisioned it. And plenty of Nolan fans are willing to go to great lengths for the full, authentic experience.
Chasing a Ticket for a 70mm IMAX Screening
Variety’s coverage of the phenomenon is telling. It describes Amber Connaghan, a 29 year old tech journalist living in the California desert, as determined to see the film on opening day. She bought her ticket a year in advance and is preparing for a three hour drive to the nearest theater showing the 70mm IMAX print.
Because many IMAX theaters can’t project films in 70mm, people are crossing state lines, having secured tickets for these specific screenings months in advance. Some are even settling for showings of the nearly three hour epic at 2am, just to say they caught one of the first “Odyssey” screenings.
Advance Ticket Sales in Greece
For the record, in Greece too, advance ticket sales for the film’s IMAX screenings in the first days are either sold out or nearly full, as happened this morning with the midnight showings at 00:05 and 04:00. Village opened advance ticket sales in Greece for “Odyssey” a month early, and for the first time, opened sales for the film’s second week as well.
According to information “To Vima” received from the company Tanweer on presale trends in Greece, 35,000 to 40,000 tickets have been sold nationwide so far. Far from a small number, given the backlash the film has also faced on its home turf.
L to R: Matt Damon is Odysseus and Zendaya is Athena in THE ODYSSEY, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan. A© Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Today’s Thirty-Somethings See Nolan as “Their Own Spielberg”
On the other side of the Atlantic, the cinematic arrival of Homer’s epic is a major event. A 27 year old software consultant based in Dallas, Hogan Shea, calls it the biggest film of the year from the most important director of this generation, telling Variety that Nolan’s name means as much to his generation as Spielberg’s or Scorsese’s did to his parents’.
Even bolder is Tim McHugh. The 33 year old healthcare consultant is flying from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles to see the film in IMAX 70mm at Universal City Walk.
He says watching something in IMAX 70mm has been a lifelong goal since he saw a video from Ryan Coogler about screenings of “Sinners.” McHugh worked as a projectionist at a local theater in high school.
Matt Damon is Odysseus in THE ODYSSEY, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.
McHugh sounds like a character out of “Cinema Paradiso” in how he appreciates the physical transport of IMAX 70mm reels. He describes spending much of his life after school threading film through a projector, which is how he fell in love with cinema, adding that handling the film itself makes him feel connected to the medium.
Sold Out Instantly, Lines Everywhere
Universal, which is distributing “Odyssey” worldwide, first opened advance ticket sales for IMAX screenings a year ago. Tickets for most showings sold out within hours.
The studio released a second batch of tickets in June, but this triggered hour long online queues and site crashes as buyers scrambled to grab a spot.
Some people didn’t wait around for crashed websites to come back online. Spencer Frey, 27, from Hoboken, New Jersey, was working in New York when “Odyssey” tickets went on sale in June. Since the AMC Theatres website kept freezing, he walked to the chain’s box office at Lincoln Square on his lunch break to book a seat in person.
Frey describes the scene inside as complete pandemonium, saying he’d never seen so many people crowding a lobby on a weekday trying to reach an open register.
Early Box Office Estimates
Nolan’s “Odyssey,” one of the most expensive films of his career, is expected to dominate the box office over the coming four day weekend, with its commercial success serving as further proof of the director’s popularity. Most analysts estimate its opening haul at 100 to 120 million dollars domestically, with another 120 to 150 million internationally, putting the global opening in the range of 220 to 250 million dollars.
With a 250 million dollar budget, the film will likely need more than 600 to 700 million dollars in worldwide box office to turn a profit, depending on the final cost of marketing and distribution, estimated at 350 to 400 million dollars.
Nolan has leaned so heavily on every promotional campaign for his films to push the theatrical experience and the benefits of IMAX’s giant screens that his name has become synonymous with blockbuster entertainment on the big screen.
Some devoted fans of the English director’s work won’t just watch “Odyssey” opening weekend, they’re planning to spend much of July watching Odysseus return to Ithaca again and again. Simon James, a 33 year old lawyer in New York, has bought 18 tickets for “Odyssey” screenings in IMAX 70mm at AMC Lincoln Square across the film’s first three weeks of release.
James calls Nolan his favorite director and says he fully believes him when he says an IMAX theater is the best way to watch his films, adding that the experience is elevated under the right conditions.
One caveat: many ticket buyers are drawn to the 70mm IMAX screenings of “Odyssey” because they see it as the next big cultural event.
Connaghan describes it partly as FOMO, saying she wants to see what a director like Nolan can do with a spectacular epic like this one, and that she knew from the moment tickets went on sale a year ago that this was something special she didn’t want to miss.
With information from Variety
