‘The Odyssey’ has turned scarcity into a virtue

Only a film that can boast of having raised unprecedented expectations can sell tickets without showing hardly any images of its footage, and of course not even half a trailer that allows viewers to get an idea of ​​what the production looks like. But Nolan is a special case. The first fans of ‘The Odyssey’ bought their tickets a year ago, blindly, with only Nolan’s word that they had to trust his Trojan Horse and his Odysseus journey. That gesture of trust from their fans has become the best possible marketing campaign.

The numbers. ‘The Odyssey’ has collected 124.5 million dollars in its opening weekend in the United States and 264.1 million globally: the best global opening of Nolan’s entire career. Universal invested 250 million dollars in producing it and another 125 million in promoting it around the world. And yet, almost no one who has paid for a ticket has seen it as Nolan conceived it.

Advance sale. Universal opened the sale of the first tickets in July 2025, twelve months before the premiere. In less than an hour, the premiere screenings in IMAX 70mm format were sold out in half the world. Almost a year later, in June 2026, Universal released a second batch of tickets for the sessions closest to the premiere, and the AMC and Fandango websites, belonging to the most important theater chains in the US, collapsed again with virtual queues of more than an hour. Fandango would end up calling “The Odyssey” your number one pre-sale of 2026with about $40 million sold in advance.

34 rooms. Why such a hurry? There are only 34 theaters in the entire planet that can project in the format 70mm IMAX that Nolan filmed. Deadline also breaks down where the premiere’s revenue came from: 25% from digital IMAX formats, another 25% from screens premium property of the exhibitors, 5% of sessions in 70mm IMAX and an additional 3% in conventional 70mm. In sum, almost six out of every ten opening dollars came from formats that required, at a minimum, planning the session well in advance.

Enter resale. With such a narrow offer, the secondary market did not take long to make an appearance. They started seeing each other pairs of tickets for $2,000 in New York, and advertisements asking for $10,000 for a batch of twelve seats for a single session. Universal does not organize this resale nor does it take a cent from it, but it is interested: every queue, every image on social networks of a ticket for hundreds of dollars means that the film does not leave the conversation.

The ‘Oppenheimer’ precedent. Nolan already tested this formula, although on a smaller scale, in 2023. The 70mm screenings of ‘Oppenheimer’ also sold out in days and generated their own resale market, a pattern that has been repeated three years later. IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond summed it up bluntly: The film already had enough cast and director to work, but the format ended up turning it into a global phenomenon. The opening numbers support that reading. For example, in New York, the only theater with 70mm IMAX is the AMC Lincoln Square 13. All its sessions, including the two in the morning ones, are sold out until August 12, and AMC has not yet confirmed if it will expand the number of passes.

Spain, off the map. In Spain the correct room does not exist directly. No cinema in the country projects the full 70mm IMAX, and the closest one with that format is outside of Spain and Latin America. Anyone who wants to get closer to the experience without leaving the country has two substitutes: seven cinemas with digital laser IMAX, including Kinépolis in Madrid and Valencia, and four additional theaters with standard 70mm photochemical. Of course, resale is also working at full speed: entries have been seen for up to 1,000 euros.

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