Entertainment

Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' Extends IMAX 70mm Run as It Rewrites Box-Office Records

Jonah VillalbaPublished 3w ago3 min readBased on 3 sources
Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' Extends IMAX 70mm Run as It Rewrites Box-Office Records
Photo by Photograph by Richard Goldschmidt, www.piqtured.com Derivative by Keraunoscopia / CC BY 3.0

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey will keep playing on IMAX 70mm screens through 30 September, extending its run on the large-format film stock to eleven weeks, according to Variety.

The extension comes with the film already standing as the highest-grossing IMAX release of all time. The Odyssey has earned $457 million in IMAX theatres worldwide, surpassing the $271 million that James Cameron's Avatar grossed in the format in 2009 (not adjusted for inflation), per Variety.

There are only 41 IMAX 70mm screens in the world — a specialised projection format using 15-perforation, 70mm film stock, the highest-resolution commercial cinema format available. Those 41 screens have generated $66 million of the film's box office, averaging roughly $1.6 million per location, Variety reports.

The IMAX performance is one layer of a much bigger total. The Odyssey has earned $1.55 billion worldwide, making it the highest-grossing R-rated film ever, overtaking 2024's Deadpool & Wolverine, which finished its run at $1.338 billion. It is also Nolan's biggest film, surpassing The Dark Knight Rises, which grossed $1.1 billion in 2012, according to Variety.

Nolan shot the entire film with IMAX cameras — a first for a feature film. Production consumed 2.1 million feet of film stock, a distance longer than the drive from Toronto to New York, Variety reports. The film went on sale in select IMAX 70mm theatres on 4 June, per IMAX, ahead of its theatrical opening.

IMAX had already been tracking records earlier in the run. By 3 August, the company confirmed that The Odyssey was the fastest film in IMAX history to surpass $200 million in global box office, and that it had delivered $44 million in its third weekend in the format alone, according to IMAX.

The cast is led by Matt Damon as Odysseus, with an ensemble including Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong'o, Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Elliot Page, Jon Bernthal and John Leguizamo, per Variety.

For audiences who have not yet caught the film in its intended format, the extension buys another four weeks. After 30 September, the 70mm prints come off those 41 screens — and the window to see the film as Nolan shot it closes, at least in theatres.

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