‘The Odyssey’ Refuses to Slow Down in IMAX, and Its Seventh Weekend Numbers Prove It

Christopher Nolan has built a career on making moviegoers show up in theaters when everyone else assumed the era of the big-screen event was fading, and ‘The Odyssey‘ has spent the summer proving that instinct right all over again. His adaptation of Homer’s ancient epic, led by Matt Damon as Odysseus, arrived with the kind of scale usually reserved for superhero tentpoles despite being a nearly three-hour, R-rated retelling of a 3,000-year-old poem.

That gamble paid off almost immediately. The film opened to a massive haul, crossed the billion-dollar mark faster than almost anything in Nolan’s filmography, and quickly became the director’s highest-grossing movie ever, according to reporting from Variety.

Now, seven weekends into its run, ‘The Odyssey’ is still showing almost no signs of slowing down in IMAX specifically. According to weekend-by-weekend IMAX figures, the film pulled in $51.8 million in its first weekend, followed by $48 million, $44.7 million, $37 million, another $37 million, $34.4 million, and $24.6 million in its seventh weekend, a remarkably gentle decline for a film this deep into its theatrical run.

That kind of staying power lines up with what IMAX itself has already been celebrating throughout the film’s release. The company confirmed that ‘The Odyssey’ delivered the highest-grossing second weekend in IMAX history, and that it crossed $100 million in global IMAX box office in just ten days, making it the second-fastest film ever to hit that mark behind only 2019’s ‘Avengers: Endgame.’

By the time the film crossed the billion-dollar milestone, IMAX had contributed roughly $257 million in ticket sales, positioning ‘The Odyssey’ to become the format’s single highest-grossing release of all time, ahead of 2009’s ‘Avatar.’ That IMAX total kept climbing well past that point too, later surpassing $289 million as the film’s overall haul pushed past $1.1 billion worldwide.

Much of that momentum traces back to how the film was actually made. ‘The Odyssey’ is the first-ever theatrical release shot entirely with IMAX film cameras, with Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema developing new camera technology specifically for the production, including a version enabling synchronized sound.

The film’s limited rollout of IMAX 70mm screens, Nolan’s preferred format, has been especially telling. Even with only 41 such screens available worldwide, that footprint alone generated tens of millions of dollars, and Universal and IMAX have had to repeatedly extend the format’s availability into September just to keep up with demand, with showtimes selling out as quickly as they’re released.

Even outside IMAX, the broader box office trajectory backs up just how unusual this run has been. Second-week domestic ticket sales dropped just 27 percent from opening weekend, far gentler than the 50 to 70 percent decline typical of most Hollywood blockbusters, and the film has continued climbing the weekly charts even in its seventh weekend, at one point surging back to the number two domestic spot ahead of more than a dozen newer releases.

Glowing reviews have clearly played a role in sustaining that kind of audience turnout, with the film earning near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes scores from both critics and audiences alike. Combined with its status as the first film shot entirely on IMAX cameras, that reputation appears to be exactly what’s convincing ticket buyers to keep choosing the premium format well over a month after release.

With ‘The Odyssey’ still holding strong in its seventh weekend and IMAX showtimes booked out weeks in advance, there’s little indication this theatrical run is finished making history.

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