Tickets for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey Sell Out - A Year Ahead of Release
Despite still being in production, Christopher Nolan’s hotly anticipated epic The Odyssey has already sold out its first round of tickets—more than a year before it reaches cinemas.
The film, a cinematic reimagining of Homer’s classic tale with Matt Damon portraying the hero Odysseus, is set to debut on 17 July 2026. But on Thursday, a limited batch of tickets was released for IMAX screenings in a rare early pre-sale, setting what may be a record for the longest lead time for ticket sales in film history.
The advance tickets are only for screenings on 1570 format IMAX projectors—a premium, ultra-high-resolution film format Nolan is known to favour. Only 26 IMAX theatres globally are equipped to handle this format, which uses 70mm tall frames and 15 perforations along the edge, allowing for staggering visual clarity.
Each of the participating cinemas will only run one screening per day across the opening weekend—from 16 to 19 July 2026—as the movie’s final runtime is yet to be confirmed.
At IMAX Melbourne, around 1,800 tickets were snapped up across four showings overnight.
“It’s completely normal to put tickets on sale 365 days early, right?” joked Jeremy Fee, general manager at IMAX Melbourne, speaking to Guardian Australia. “We absolutely idolise Nolan here. It’s borderline obsessive—but that’s the kind of filmmaker he is.”
In the US, tickets sold out within an hour, with some immediately appearing on resale platforms for between $300 and $400. London’s BFI IMAX and the Science Museum’s IMAX are among the UK venues that have also completely sold out their initial allocations.
Nolan has long been a champion of the IMAX format, beginning with The Dark Knight in 2008. His 2023 historical drama Oppenheimer, which won multiple Academy Awards, was the first full-length feature shot entirely on IMAX 65mm film. But The Odyssey marks an even bigger leap—it will be the first film shot entirely using newly developed IMAX cameras, designed specifically to be quiet enough for capturing dialogue on set.
IMAX screenings accounted for nearly $190 million of Oppenheimer’s global $975.8 million box office. The film’s 1570 reel was over 18 kilometres long, weighed in at 260kg, and required cinema hardware to be physically modified to accommodate its size—namely, expanding the platter that holds the reel to nearly two metres in diameter. Fee expects The Odyssey to surpass even that.
“The Oppenheimer reel was a monster, but we suspect this one could be even bigger,” he said.
Fee explained that Melbourne IMAX’s longest-ever pre-sale prior to this was roughly three months. “We’ve never put tickets on sale this far out. We had to make backend changes to our system just to handle it. It’s definitely a unique moment for us.”
The early ticket release wasn’t about volume, Fee clarified, but about building momentum among Nolan’s loyal fanbase.
“This isn’t just a film—it’s an event. For Nolan fans, seeing it in this format, the way he intends it to be viewed, is the ultimate cinema experience,” he said. “We fully expect it to outperform Oppenheimer, which is already the most successful film we’ve ever shown.”
The buzz has already sparked “cinema tourism”, he noted, with audiences planning travel around the film’s screening. “We’ve got people who’ve booked tickets and are now arranging flights from New Zealand and across Australia to see it,” Fee said.
As of now, Melbourne IMAX hasn’t observed any signs of scalpers reselling tickets from its allocation, although that hasn’t stopped it happening elsewhere.
“This is just a fraction of the total number of screenings that will eventually go on sale,” Fee added. “Anyone paying a huge premium now is likely wasting their money. There’ll be plenty of opportunities to see it. But for those who jumped early—it’s something to brag about.”
