‘The Odyssey’ Just Broke a Major ‘Avengers: Endgame’ Box Office Record
Christopher Nolan has never needed much convincing to make an event out of a movie release, but even by his own standards, the rollout for ‘The Odyssey’ has become something genuinely unprecedented. Universal made the highly unusual decision to put select IMAX 70mm tickets on sale a full year before the film’s release, a gamble that immediately paid off when those seats sold out within the hour.
That early frenzy turned out to be just the opening act. As the film’s actual release date approached, presale numbers kept climbing to levels that started drawing direct comparisons to some of the biggest box office events in recent memory, including Marvel’s ‘Avengers: Endgame’, long considered one of the gold standards for advance ticket demand.
According to reports circulating around the film’s release, ‘The Odyssey’ has officially surpassed ‘Avengers: Endgame’ to record the biggest IMAX pre-sales window ever for any film. Whether or not that exact title changes hands officially, the underlying sales figures tell a genuinely staggering story on their own.
In the United States, premium large format tickets that went on sale a full year in advance generated roughly 150,000 tickets sold and $3.4 million in gross revenue within just 24 hours, according to Variety, marking the highest total in four years for that kind of advance window. AMC also confirmed the film posted the highest first-day advance PLF ticket sales the chain has seen in four years, with wait times on its booking website stretching as long as an hour during peak demand.
The demand extended well beyond American shores. London’s BFI IMAX, the largest cinema screen in the United Kingdom, sold 28,000 tickets within its first 24 hours on sale, grossing £750,000 and shattering the venue’s previous first-day record, more than doubling the mark set by ‘Dune: Part Two’ and nearly quadrupling Nolan’s own ‘Oppenheimer’.
That kind of demand has continued right through to release. Fandango confirmed ‘The Odyssey’ as its top preseller of 2026, with advance ticket sales reaching around $40 million heading into opening weekend, while Thursday preview screenings alone pulled in $17.6 million, officially the best single preview night of the year and nearly double what ‘Oppenheimer’ managed in the same window.
Much of that revenue has been driven specifically by premium formats. A breakdown of opening night grosses showed 58 percent of ticket sales came from IMAX, premium large format, and 70mm prints combined, an especially notable figure given that only 34 true IMAX 70mm screens exist worldwide, the exact format the film was shot on using IMAX cameras exclusively.
Do you think 'The Odyssey' has earned its place as an IMAX box office phenomenon?
With scalpers reportedly reselling some tickets for as much as $1,500 and theaters continuing to report sold-out IMAX 70mm showtimes weeks in advance, ‘The Odyssey’ looks positioned to remain one of the defining box office stories of the year regardless of exactly where it lands in the record books. Do you think ‘The Odyssey’ deserves the title of biggest IMAX presale of all time, and did you manage to snag a premium format ticket yourself. Let us know in the comments.
