The Odyssey has made IMAX 70mm a status symbol

Summer's hottest ticket is an IMAX 70mm screening of The Odyssey.

People have spent hundreds of dollars, undertaken road trips, and even planned pregnancies around the possibility of seeing Christopher Nolan's latest film in IMAX 70mm. Sure, you may think Odysseus' (Matt Damon) journey home to Ithaca was hard, but did he ever face the struggle of having the AMC app crash repeatedly while trying to get The Odyssey tickets?

The intense buzz comes down to a major aspect of The Odyssey's marketing push: the many film formats you can see it in. The Odyssey is the first movie to be shot entirely with IMAX film cameras, so Nolan's preferred way for people to watch the film is IMAX 70mm. With this massive film format, viewers can see The Odyssey at its highest resolution, with the fullest image possible, shot in a square-like 1.43:1 aspect ratio. Other formats, including standard 70mm or 35mm, have smaller aspect ratios. That means they cut off a sizable chunk of the IMAX frame. While the movie will still rock, you'll lose head room on close-ups, as well as the sheer vastness of the landscapes Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema are capturing.

So, in order to quite literally see the most of The Odyssey, you've got to go to a theater capable of screening IMAX 70mm film. However, there are only 41 movie theaters in the world capable of screening that format, as IMAX has not built new IMAX film projectors in decades. IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond told Variety that "we build new projectors every day, but film projectors using this film — it’s just not practical.” He did, however, note the desire for growth thanks to demand.

Of those 41 movie theaters able to show IMAX 70mm films, 25 are in the United States (eight of which are in California alone). There are nine in Canada, three in the United Kingdom, three scattered across Europe, and one in all of Australia. No theaters in Asia, Africa, or South America are able to screen The Odyssey in its intended format, turning the format that Nolan and his cast are encouraging viewers to go see into a very exclusive — and very Western — affair. (Not to mention costly. Tickets range from $18 and $33, depending on the theater, making it more expensive than other formats.)

Do you really only want to see a sliver of this?
Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon / Universal Pictures

Exclusivity breeds status, and the scarcity of IMAX 70mm screens has turned The Odyssey screenings into full-on status symbols. When IMAX 70mm tickets went on sale a full year in advance, they sold out within the hour. People are reselling their tickets for close to a thousand dollars. On opening day, AMC, Fandango, and the official IMAX site kept kicking me out when I tried to search for New York screenings, even weeks after opening weekend, due to high demand. (This even includes the occasional 2 and 3 a.m. screenings.) Clearly, people don't just want to see The Odyssey. They want to see The Odyssey in its most premium, most expensive format, which has also been touted as its most definitive form.

Other blockbusters have taken a page from The Odyssey's IMAX 70mm playbook. Dune: Part Three, out Dec. 18, dropped IMAX 70mm tickets for its opening weekend way back in April. Like with The Odyssey, tickets sold out almost instantly. It was the Eras Tour Ticketmaster war for people with AMC A-List and A24 totes.

On the one hand, this booming interest in IMAX 70mm format is a positive sign for the future of moviegoing. It's brought conversations about film formats fully into the mainstream, and it's part of a box office upswing in 2026, one that's also been propelled by big-name biopics (Michael), high-profile sequels (The Devil Wears Prada 2), animated franchises (Toy Story 5), and low-budget horror hits (Obsession).

On the other hand, when so few people are able to catch a film in the format it was meant to be watched in, it creates an inevitable divide in the audience. There are those who have access, and those who don't. Or in The Odyssey's case, those who saw the film's full frame, and those who only saw a percentage of it.

As the IMAX 70mm format continues to be a draw, especially when paired with the right filmmakers and cast, here's hoping there will be greater efforts to make it more accessible in the long run. After all, no one should have to undertake an odyssey just to see The Odyssey.

The Odyssey is now in theaters.