Hourslong wait times on gridlocked ticketing websites. Stressed fans freaking out online. Resellers flipping tickets for around 10 times their face value.
It’s not a scramble for the latest Harry Styles or Olivia Rodrigo tour. It’s the chase for prime showings of “The Odyssey,” director Christopher Nolan’s retelling of Homer’s epic and the first Hollywood feature shot entirely on IMAX cameras.
The ticket-buying frenzy for live music has now come for the movies. Desperate cinema buffs are going on real-life odysseys to secure seats in the first deluxe screenings—including showings at 7 a.m. and 3 a.m. on opening weekend for “The Odyssey” next month.
When spots in premium-format theaters went on sale last week, ticketing sites including Fandango and AMC Theatres faced a bottleneck of traffic that resulted in buyers reporting malfunctions and marathon waits.
Last Thursday at noon in New York City, Enrico Po was poised on his laptop when tickets became available. He didn’t plan on a three-hour saga.
“It was me just getting caught up in this vortex,” said Po, 29, whose flexible schedule as a writer allowed him to devote a weekday afternoon to the quest.
He got stuck in virtual waiting rooms and encountered error messages on several ticketing sites. After trying for two hours and scouring Reddit for tips, Po leapt in a Lyft to an AMC theater on the Upper West Side, where he joined a growing line. After another hour of waiting and watching employees reboot ticket kiosks, Po snagged two decent seats. He had to settle for the fifth day of release: Monday, at 10 p.m., for the nearly three-hour movie.
Fandango said first-day “Odyssey” ticket sales were 10 times those for “ Oppenheimer ,” Nolan’s previous release. AMC Entertainment referred to a post on X from its chief executive, Adam Aron , in which he apologized for long wait times. “Fortunately we still have MILLIONS more available seats” for less-in-demand showings, he wrote.
For Po and many others, it was a nonnegotiable to see the movie in the highest-fidelity format touted by Nolan. The AMC Lincoln Square 13 offers the largest of New York’s limited number of IMAX screens, and it’s the only one in the area that combines IMAX with 70-millimeter film projection.
Despite multiple alternatives, including standard screenings and special formats from rival theater brands, IMAX 70mm is at the center of the “Odyssey” rush because it has a higher resolution than digital projections and uses the same jumbo film stock Nolan used in his cameras.
For one 3 a.m. showing of ‘The Odyssey’ in New York City on opening weekend, available seats (in blue) were scarce as of this week. Fandango
As studios and theaters struggle to bring in casual moviegoers, the industry is capitalizing on those who will pay steeper fees for the ultimate picture and sound. The outsize demand has been fueled by an online hype cycle more often seen with the release of limited-edition sneakers.
Scalpers didn’t waste any time. Some opening-weekend tickets that initially sold for around $30 have been reselling for around $250 per pair on eBay. Limited-edition “Odyssey” popcorn buckets shaped like an IMAX camera have sold on eBay for upward of $200 each.
Theaters are cashing in, too. The Museum of Discovery & Science in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is offering VIP packages in its IMAX theater for $2,000 each. Two of these bundles, which include 10 tickets, concessions and a tour of the 70mm projector room, have sold so far.
Across all movie releases, 16% of tickets sold this year were in premium-format auditoriums, up from 13% in 2021, according to research firm EntTelligence. These tickets cost more than $18 on average nationally, and several dollars more in Los Angeles and New York.
Hardcore fans of Nolan’s knotty, grand-scale films are at the apex of this market. The director, 55, pioneered Hollywood’s use of IMAX cameras—which create lush resolution for extra-large screens—starting with his 2008 Batman movie, “The Dark Knight.” With each successive release, Nolan helped train a generation of movie nerds in the virtues of large-format film.
To fire up this fan base, Universal Pictures offered a batch of tickets for “The Odyssey” in IMAX 70mm venues nearly a year ago. Daniel Chavez, an executive chef in Los Angeles, bought four seats together for the first showing at the TCL Chinese Theatres in Hollywood.
Chavez, 32, said he’s been a die-hard Nolan fan since “The Dark Knight” blew his mind at age 14. He didn’t consider profiting off his tickets until he saw other people doing it: “I said, ‘Hey, I have a wedding to plan.’”
He listed his second-row seats on eBay for $1,200. Someone offered $850 and he agreed. Minus fees, Chavez profited about $500, which he put toward his wedding last month.
But he still needed to see “The Odyssey.” Before the main drop for premium screenings last week, he rehearsed the steps it would take to improve his chances of snagging them online. “My wife thinks I’m crazy, but I was practicing the clicks,” he said.
Chavez nabbed four tickets to an opening-day screening at an IMAX 70mm venue in Irvine, Calif. Then, feeling a hot hand, he grabbed four more seats at the same theater for a showtime a few days later.
This time, he won’t sell any on eBay, he said. He’ll use the extra set to see the movie again.
