Sarah Morrison didn’t want to just watch The Odyssey. She wanted to experience it the way director Christopher Nolan intended: on 70mm film, projected on an IMAX screen.
A self-described film buff, the New York-based content creator has been a fan of Homer’s epic since first reading a children’s adaptation in elementary school. But like many moviegoers in the Big Apple, she found herself competing with thousands of other New Yorkers with the same idea, and was subsequently shut out of showtimes on the official ticketing websites. Undeterred, Morrison resorted to searching secondary markets for any resale tickets, ultimately securing a 2 p.m. screening last Tuesday on eBay.
“I found a listing on eBay for $49. It was stacked against others going for like $400, $500, upwards [of] $3,000,” Morrison told Fortune. ”It was really a steal and [a] hidden gem.” Standard IMAX tickets usually retail for roughly $25 to $35; for a standard showing it’s $10 to $20.
She’s far from alone. Weeks after its release, excitement around the epic’s adaptation is still so great, it’s driving a secondary ticket market. On eBay and other resale platforms, sellers are listing tickets for 70mm screenings well above face value, with one transaction reaching as high as $2,000 for two tickets for a premium showtime in New York. And the secondary markets aren’t limited to just tickets: early attendees of the film capitalized on the fanfare and listed exclusive movie memorabilia, including rare filmstrips that were distributed at select screenings.
