Julian Flores is determined to watch “The Odyssey” in Imax 70mm, exactly as director Christopher Nolan intends for it to be seen — even if that means buying tickets for opening weekend 12 months in advance.
But Flores, a 24-year-old employee of Universal Studios living in Burbank, knew that the competition for seats would be fierce. Instead of logging on to Fandango along with thousands of other film fans in the dead of night Wednesday, Flores instead made the trek to his local AMC and secured his ticket in person.
“When I went to the counter, the employees started laughing like I was crazy for getting tickets a year in advance,” Flores says. “I don’t blame them. It’s completely crazy for me to even be thinking about what I’ll be doing some Thursday in July of 2026.”
But a few hours later, Flores gets the last laugh. Universal’s unprecedented move of offering tickets to select Imax 70mm screenings of “The Odyssey,” exactly one year to the day ahead of its debut on July 17, 2026, yielded nationwide sell-outs within minutes. Some social media users gleefully posted receipts for their tickets, while many more were unsuccessful due to sluggish, stalled theater websites.
Now, less than 24 hours after they were made available, 95% of available seats have been sold, according to an insider. The bulk of those sales happened within their first hour on the market.
It’s an impressive flex for Universal, which has earned a lot of buzz and media attention for bucking industry tradition. Typically, tickets for new movies are made available a few months ahead of release at most. “The Odyssey” isn’t only still without an official runtime — it’s still in the midst of filming. Stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland and Zendaya were spotted shooting scenes in Scotland earlier this week.
The high demand reconfirms the name-brand box office draw of Nolan, who has become one of the most commercially successful directors ever with summer blockbusters like the “Dark Knight” trilogy, “Inception” and, most recently, the best picture Oscar winner “Oppenheimer.” But it runs deeper than that. Moviegoers don’t just care about seeing a Nolan film; they care about how he wants them to see his films.
Nolan has long been a passionate champion for Imax and shooting on film, arguing that the visuals on projected prints are crisper and the premium auditoriums’ wider screens make for a more immersive experience. For “The Odyssey,” Nolan is shooting the entire film on Imax cameras, making it the first studio feature ever to be produced in that way. The rapid sell-outs demonstrate a significant consumer embrace of Imax 70mm — a format that, even a decade ago, was only recognizable to hardcore cinephiles.
“It’s bold, it’s brilliant and it’s audacious,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, about starting off sales a year out. “But only someone of Nolan’s stature could pull this off. He’s a brand unto himself. If other filmmakers tried this, people would scoff.”
With the box office still struggling to return to pre-pandemic levels, analysts argue that “The Odyssey” pre-sales show one way that studios can hype up their films by embracing more extravagant measures and breaking from marketing norms.
“This ticketing decision is generating all kinds of upfront attention for the movie,” says Shawn Robbins, director of movie analytics at Fandango. “When you do something that’s never been done before, it helps make the movie seem like an event.”
But new methods comes with new consequences. By opening Imax 70mm showtimes up a year out, Universal fostered a secondary market of ticket scalpers looking to cash in on the limited supply of opening weekend showtimes. Ebay auctions for “The Odyssey” admissions were posted within hours of initial sales opening, with some prices going upwards of $200. One ticket for a Sunday evening Cinemark screening in Dallas is going for 400% face value, which will score the buyer a less-than-optimal, neck-craning seat in the left of the second row. A package of four Saturday tickets for AMC Lincoln Square in New York City has started bidding at $1,000.
Whether many of those scalpers will be successful in capitalizing on eager fans is another matter. Unlike the live events industry, which has been scourged by online ticket scalping for years, “The Odyssey” will possess a much more robust supply of showtimes. Opening weekend may be nearly sold out, but Nolan’s film will continue to play Imax auditoriums for several days after, with those screenings likely going on sale closer to release. And for those who aren’t Imax 70mm purists, there will be tens of thousands of “Odyssey” screenings in standard auditoriums, or even potentially other premium large format venues like Dolby.
But for the Nolan devotees, the frenzied rush to be among the first to see “The Odyssey” on its director’s favorite type of big screen was totally worth it. They’re even willing to take a chance that their schedules will be free in 365 days.
“I might need to be out of town. My wife may have to travel out of the country for work or I could be stuck in a writers room. But at least the tickets are refundable,” says Sean Collins-Smith, a 37-year-old screenwriter. “It’s unusual to make this kind of commitment a year ahead of time — it could blow up in my face.”
