IMAX announced Monday that Spider-Man: Brand New Day will start showing on select IMAX screens across North America beginning Thursday, August 6. This comes after The Odyssey had those screens to itself for three weekends. The two films will now play alongside each other in IMAX theaters, with The Odyssey continuing on the global IMAX network. (The Verge)

The expansion arrives during a record-setting stretch for IMAX and the broader box office. Spider-Man: Brand New Day earned $355 million following its July 31 release, making it the second-biggest box office debut in North America since Avengers: Endgame in 2019. It also brought in $72 million in preview ticket sales, the highest preview total for any domestic film. (CNBC)

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, shot entirely with IMAX film cameras, has been the engine of IMAX's summer. The film earned $51 million over a weekend weeks after its premiere. Of that, $22.1 million came from IMAX screens alone, which is 43% of the weekend total. The Odyssey has now generated $221 million at the global IMAX box office to date. IMAX states the film is the only title to have driven multiple $40 million-plus weekends in its global box office. (Deadline)

July was the highest-grossing month in IMAX company history, with $257 million in ticket revenue. The Odyssey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Toy Story 5, Moana, and Minions & Monsters together drove a record-breaking $430 million weekend at the overall domestic box office. (Variety)

The scheduling arrangement between the two films is worth a closer look. IMAX is a premium large-screen format where tickets cost more than a standard movie theater, often two or three times as much. For its first three weekends, The Odyssey had IMAX screens all to itself, letting it earn as much as possible from those higher-priced tickets without another big movie competing for the same seats. That exclusive period now shifts to a shared arrangement: Spider-Man gets access to digital IMAX locations, while The Odyssey keeps its 70mm film showings at select theaters. Think of IMAX screens like VIP seats at a concert. For three weeks, The Odyssey had all the VIP seats to itself. Now Spider-Man is moving into some of those seats while The Odyssey holds onto the rest.

The economics are straightforward. Because IMAX tickets cost so much more, a blockbuster film can earn a large chunk of its total money from a small number of premium screens. The Odyssey's 43% weekend share from IMAX screens alone shows how powerful that price difference can be. Opening Spider-Man on those same screens, even partially, gives Sony access to a revenue level that went largely untapped during The Odyssey's exclusive run.

The broader context here is that IMAX is no longer just a specialty format added onto a regular movie release. With $257 million in a single month and two films collectively driving hundreds of millions through its screens, the company now functions as its own distribution channel with its own schedule, exclusive windows, and revenue shares. The decision to run both titles at the same time rather than keeping The Odyssey's lock on IMAX screens suggests IMAX sees more total value in offering a mix of films than in sticking with a single title, even one as successful as The Odyssey.

For the movie theater industry, the $430 million combined weekend across five titles signals that audience demand in the summer of 2026 is absorbing a bigger lineup of films than has been typical in recent years. The question of whether that level of demand continues beyond the current batch of major releases is still open, but the numbers through July indicate that the premium end of the market, IMAX especially, is running at levels the format has not seen before.