Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Just Pulled Off an IMAX Record That Even Tops ‘Avengers, Endgame’

Christopher Nolan has spent years pushing large format filmmaking further than almost anyone else in Hollywood, and ‘The Odyssey’ represents the culmination of that obsession. Billed as the first Hollywood feature ever shot entirely with IMAX cameras, the film arrived with an enormous amount riding on how audiences would respond to seeing Homer’s ancient epic rendered at that scale. Early results suggest the gamble paid off in a way that even Nolan’s biggest previous openings could not match.

Matt Damon leads the sprawling cast as Odysseus, joined by Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Robert Pattinson, and Lupita Nyong’o in a retelling of the king’s journey home after the Trojan War.

The film’s opening weekend already broke a long list of records for Nolan personally, including his best-ever global debut and his strongest opening since ‘The Dark Knight Rises.’ But it is the format-specific numbers that have turned heads inside the exhibition industry.

‘The Odyssey’ pulled in 51.8 million dollars from IMAX screens worldwide during its opening weekend, with 29.6 million dollars of that coming from North America and roughly 22.2 million dollars from international IMAX engagements. That result marks IMAX’s best weekend ever as a company, and it places ‘The Odyssey’ in exceptionally rare company when it comes to opening weekend format performance.

For context, only one other film has ever crossed 50 million dollars in IMAX ticket sales during its opening frame, and that film happens to be ‘Avengers: Endgame.‘ Marvel’s 2019 finale pulled in 91.5 million dollars globally from IMAX during its debut, nearly doubling the previous record at the time. However, 42.4 million dollars of that total came specifically from China, a market where ‘The Odyssey’ has not yet opened, with releases there still to come later this year.

Once that Chinese portion is set aside, ‘Endgame’ actually generated 49.1 million dollars from every other IMAX market combined. That means ‘The Odyssey,’ operating without access to China at all, still managed to edge past that number with its 51.8 million dollar haul, making it arguably the biggest IMAX opening weekend ever recorded outside of that single market.

The format’s dominance extended well beyond the biggest number too. IMAX reported that Thursday previews alone marked the format’s biggest single opening day ever, surpassing even the recent ‘Avatar’ sequel, while the 41 screens capable of showing the film in true 70mm generated 6.3 million dollars on their own.

Premium formats overall accounted for more than half of the film’s entire domestic box office, underscoring just how much of the audience specifically sought out the biggest possible screen for this particular story.

IMAX has committed its entire global network to ‘The Odyssey’ for three full weeks, an unusually long exclusive window that signals just how confident the exhibitor is in the film’s staying power. That kind of format loyalty rarely gets extended unless a studio and its distributor believe the demand will hold up well beyond opening weekend, and early word of mouth, along with strong critical reception, suggest that confidence is well placed.

For Nolan, a filmmaker who has spent his career trying to convince audiences that the theatrical experience still matters, this kind of format-specific record may end up being just as meaningful as the overall box office total. Turning an R-rated adaptation of a three-thousand-year-old poem into the biggest non-Chinese IMAX opening in history is not something many directors could pull off, and it further cements Nolan’s reputation as the format’s most reliable box office draw.

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