Adrian Ford didn’t leave the theater after watching The Odyssey in IMAX. Instead, the moviegoer and Reddit reviewer behind the account “4DX Reviewer” walked straight into another screening—this time in 4DX—because sound alone made the trip worth repeating. “It was just something that you can’t really get anywhere else,” Ford told Fortune.
Ford was far from the only one willing to pay for the experience, in a way that has Hollywood reexamining its prior assumptions. Only around 40 theaters worldwide can project true IMAX 70mm film, and tickets for Christopher Nolan’s epic went on sale a full year before release, with even 3 a.m. showings at New York’s Lincoln Square IMAX selling out completely.
It was the biggest opening weekend in the company’s history, generating $52 million globally and accounting for 20% of the film’s worldwide opening weekend. IMAX also recorded its biggest opening ever for a Nolan film, and it sold out not only IMAX 70mm screenings worldwide, but also the collectible IMAX camera-shaped popcorn bucket.
“The demand for IMAX 70mm Film has exceeded even our expectations,” an IMAX spokesperson told Fortune. “We’ve never seen demand for IMAX Film on this scale.” The frenzy is partly mechanical: The Odyssey is the first narrative feature ever shot entirely on IMAX cameras, using specially engineered sound-dampening “blimp” casings so Nolan could shoot both dialogue and action in the format—a technical first that has driven cinephiles to treat 70mm as the only “true” way to see the film. (Actors were only able to record a few minutes of dialogue at one time before the cameras, $500,000 apiece, reloaded.)
