In one of the worst kept secrets since Woody Allen played Michael’s Pub, Imax 70MM showtime tickets to Christopher Nolan‘s The Oydssey are expected to go on sale Thursday, July 17 — a whole year before the Universal movie opens.
Sources at Imax, Universal and other circuits are mum about this, as if Matt Damon’s Odysseus character will slay them for making a peep.
This is a first that a studio would put a movie on sale a year in advance. Typically advance ticket sales dates are very strategic, i.e. there’s generally a two month long-lede for a highly anticipated movie like a Star Wars: Force Awakens, and a short lede for movie’s that are expected to tank, or be semi-controversial, ala Disney’s Snow White (11 days before its March 21 release). The thinking behind this is that’s there’s rabid appetite by Nolan’s 70MM fans for The Odyssey and these showtimes will sell-out. Remember, with Nolan’s multi-Oscar winner Oppenheimer, people were going to see that movie at midnight and 6 AM showtimes in the format given sellouts at normal primetimes. Nolan’s Oppenheimer grossed $191M at the global box office in Imax, repping 20% of its $975M global haul.
Nolan is shooting The Odyssey entirely with Imax film cameras (not digital). He’s been a champ of the large format exhibitor since 2008’s The Dark Knight for action scenes, as well as 2010’s Inception, 2014’s Interstellar and 2020’s Tenet.
I hear that Odyssey tickets will be on sale for a limited time.
This is Nolan’s feature take of the classic Homer Greek epic poem about the Ithaca king’s journey home post the Trojan War. Tom Holland plays Odysseus’ son Telemachus. The movie also stars Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron and Jon Bernthal.
