Christopher Nolan’s $250 Million ‘The Odyssey’ Relies on 41 Theaters and Rare Skills

‘The Odyssey’ has gained attention not only for its impressive budget and extensive cast but also for a remarkable story unfolding far from the glitz of red carpets. Before critics offered their opinions or box office figures were calculated, the film made history simply by being screened in its intended format.

Nolan filmed ‘The Odyssey’ entirely using IMAX film cameras, marking it as the first feature-length movie ever captured in this manner from beginning to end. This milestone required reviving a segment of the film industry that many studios had abandoned, as digital projection was long viewed as the more cost-effective and easier option for widespread distribution.

The revival has resulted in a scarcity that has turned 70mm IMAX tickets into one of the most sought-after items in entertainment this year. There are only a limited number of theaters globally that can project authentic IMAX 70mm film, with estimates of confirmed venues ranging from the high 30s to low 40s, depending on the source and date. Each print shown at these theaters must be physically struck and shipped from a single facility.

That facility is FotoKem in Burbank, California, the last remaining motion picture lab globally capable of producing 70mm prints. Every cut in the finished film had to be spliced by hand, and the production utilized over 2 million feet of IMAX negative to create the movie, all of which had to be processed and printed at the same lab before reaching theaters.

The scarcity extends beyond the lab itself. Each completed 70mm IMAX print reportedly costs around $80,000 to produce, and that figure does not account for the expenses individual theaters incur to maintain their aging equipment. For instance, one Las Vegas theater spent $16,000 on two humidifiers to prevent its physical print from drying out and becoming brittle inside the projection booth.

Operating this format also demands a level of specialized expertise that has nearly vanished from the industry. One veteran IMAX projectionist told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the community currently preserving the format consists of about 90 people worldwide, including both administrators and non-booth personnel, who know how to operate a 70mm IMAX film projector. This statistic highlights just how niche this skill set has become since studios largely shifted to digital projection over the past two decades.

This scarcity has directly influenced demand. When Universal released select opening weekend IMAX 70mm screenings for sale a year before the film’s debut, 95 percent of those seats were sold within an hour, generating approximately $1.5 million despite the limited number of tickets available. Retail prices for those seats ranged from $25 to $28, but resellers quickly began flipping tickets for prices between $200 and $1,000, depending on the market and seat location.

Nolan has dedicated nearly two decades to advocating for IMAX film as a format worth preserving, starting with his early use of the cameras on ‘The Dark Knight’. With ‘The Odyssey’, he has effectively made that scarcity a focal point of the film’s marketing, betting that audiences would travel across state lines and pay significantly above face value just to experience the movie as he intended.

‘The Odyssey’ is set to open in theaters on July 17, following preview screenings the night before, and features a star-studded cast including Matt Damon as Odysseus, alongside Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, and Charlize Theron.

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