Tom Cruise Turned a Storm-Delayed Movie Night Into a Private ‘The Odyssey’ Screening for An Entire Theater Staff

Getting into an IMAX 70mm screening of ‘The Odyssey’ has become one of the hardest tickets in recent movie history, with fans camping out for odd-hour showtimes and resellers charging hundreds of dollars a seat. So when Tom Cruise wanted to catch Christopher Nolan’s latest epic on opening week, even Hollywood’s biggest box office champion could not simply walk in without a plan.

Cruise had a screening arranged at the AMC Lincoln Square in New York on Wednesday night, one of the limited theaters nationwide equipped to show the film in true IMAX 70mm. A thunderstorm rolling through Manhattan had other ideas, delaying his arrival until 10.45 p.m., well after the scheduled screening had already wrapped up.

Rather than scrap the plan entirely, IMAX arranged a re-screening of the film just for Cruise once he finally made it to the theater. But he did not watch it alone. According to Page Six, before the lights went down, the 63-year-old actor rounded up every AMC staffer he could find in the building and brought them into the auditorium to experience the film together with him.

Cruise later posted photos from the screening on social media, using the moment to thank Nolan, his producing partner and wife Emma Thomas, and the film’s wider cast and crew. It is a gesture that fits neatly into Cruise’s long running reputation as one of the industry’s most vocal defenders of the traditional theatrical experience, someone who has spent years championing IMAX and film projection over digital alternatives.

That reputation carries extra weight given just how difficult it currently is to see ‘The Odyssey’ the way Nolan intended. Only 25 theaters across the United States are equipped to show the film in true IMAX 70mm, and demand has pushed some resale tickets as high as $1,000 for premium New York screenings, with fans elsewhere lining up for showtimes as early as three in the morning just to secure a seat.

‘The Odyssey’ marks Nolan’s first film since 2023’s Oscar-winning ‘Oppenheimer’, and it holds the distinction of being the first feature ever shot entirely on IMAX film cameras. The ensemble cast includes Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, and Charlize Theron, and the film opened in theaters nationwide on July 17.

Cruise’s own year has been full of milestones beyond this screening. He received an Honorary Oscar at last year’s Governors Awards, and he is set to appear next in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s ‘Digger’, a satirical comedy in which he plays a balding, potbellied oil tycoon, arriving in theaters on October 2.

For the AMC employees lucky enough to be pulled into that late-night screening, the storm delay ended up working entirely in their favor, turning an otherwise ordinary Wednesday shift into an impromptu movie night with one of the biggest stars in the world.

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