The Odyssey on IMAX
After the success of Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan set his sights on making The Odyssey a movie that’s as epic as the poem that it is based on. He had the notion of making it the first movie completely shot on IMAX. IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond thought it might’ve been impossible, but Nolan pushed anyway and Gelfond explained that Nolan made a proposal to him, “‘I’m going to give you a challenge. If you can figure out how to solve these problems, I’m going to make Odyssey 100% film with film with IMAX cameras’, and we’ve solved his problems. So, this will be the first film ever, at least filmed 100% with IMAX cameras.”
The Tech of IMAX
Just as with Oppenheimer, the true 70mm IMAX presentations, which only have somewhere over 40 locations in the U.S., are sought after by audiences. Tickets for 70mm IMAX are sold out through August and September and there are people who will even embark on road trips to get to theaters that have the authentic film presentations. The IMAX format is hotter than ever after films like Sinners and F1 followed Christopher Nolan’s lead. So, after their best year, why won’t the company build more true IMAX theaters when the audience demand is there? According to The Wrap, Gelfond explained how the logistics just don’t pan out. He explained in a Thursday earnings call,
The economics are very difficult to meet. It’s very expensive. You need film prints, not only the projector, which costs $50,000 a piece to put in your theater. You need logistics like a forklift to lift them, so you need a very big projection booth. When you get through the numbers of it, there are a finite number of locations that really can support the economics of it.”sponsored content
The Odyssey‘s $260 million global take in its first weekend owes 53% of all of its domestic grosses to the IMAX screenings. In addition to installing and housing special 70mm IMAX projectors, Gelfond also said that length becomes a factor for the company to see benefits. He expounded,
When you play for a really long time, you can make the numbers work. But if you wanted to create more and you wanted to open film releases for a weekend, the numbers just wouldn’t work for that. You need a long playtime. […] It’s finite; you just can’t say, ‘Why don’t you build hundreds of them?’ because there aren’t hundreds of places where it would work.”
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