Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey opens this weekend, and what is IMAX now matters in a very narrow way: only 25 U.S. theaters can show it in true IMAX 70mm. That rare setup is drawing demand fast, which leaves moviegoers choosing between the format and the much larger run of standard screenings.
Richard Gelfond and 25 theaters
Richard Gelfond said, “We’re sold out in some theaters into the fifth week already,” at The Odyssey premiere Tuesday night. He also said, “There’s certainly more demand. The problem is they haven’t made new Imax film projectors in about 50 years.”
The limit is not just a matter of appetite. Imax says it trained 60 new projectionists from scratch, rebuilt as many film projectors as possible in-house before The Odyssey, and spent over a year tracking down broken, abandoned and often-forgotten projectors to salvage parts.
Imax projectors and missing parts
Gelfond said, “We build new projectors every day, but film projectors using this film — it’s just not practical.” Imax sources say many of the parts needed for these specialized film projectors simply no longer exist, and the company no longer has a complete manufacturing blueprint for them.
That loss tracks with Hollywood’s move from film to digital projection in the late 2000s. Once that shift happened, the skills and hardware that supported this format became harder to replace at scale, so Imax now has to rebuild old equipment instead of ordering fresh units.
Christopher Nolan and IMAX 70mm demand
The pressure comes from demand as much as scarcity. The Odyssey is the first-ever movie shot entirely on Imax film cameras, and Imax’s 2023 box office year was near-record and fueled by Oppenheimer, so the current run is landing in a market where interest in the format has already been revived.
Gelfond said, “Can all 2,000 of our theaters be film projectors? No. There’s just not that many around. But I think we can continue to grow it.” For moviegoers, that means IMAX 70mm remains a limited option, and the practical question is how many more theaters Imax can add before The Odyssey’s run fades.
