On a Friday morning in early September, ticket holders began to congregate outside the locked doors of the AMC Lincoln Square in Manhattan. It’s been nearly two months since the opening weekend of “The Odyssey,” but the film’s 10 a.m. scheduled screening was almost entirely sold out.
The theater boasts a 70mm Imax screen — one of just 26 such theaters in the United States — making it a pilgrimage spot of sorts for cineasts and Christopher Nolan obsessives alike.
(For those in neither group, 70mm means that the film is projected from actual film stock, and Imax means it’s onto a massive screen — in this case 76 feet tall, making it the largest Imax screen with film projection capabilities in the country.)
Jay Rivera was among the ticket holders waiting for the doors to unlock.
Weeks after the original release of the film, Rivera was there for a simple reason: “It was easy to get tickets,” he said. Rivera had already seen the film at a “regular” screening at an AMC in Kips Bay, Manhattan. Now he would finally see it in its full 70mm Imax glory.
“The Odyssey” is part of a trend of films — specifically since the end of lockdown — that have used spectacle and size to draw theatergoers back to multiplexes. It’s now just as common for films to promote their technical specs and formats of release as their cast of actors.
This summer’s “The Odyssey” and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” last year’s “Sinners,” 2023’s “Barbenheimer,” and the pandemic-era-ender “Top Gun: Maverick” all “saved the movies” in part because their ad campaigns focused on the need to see the movies on the biggest screen possible.
Next up: “Dune: Part 3″ and “Avengers: Doomsday,” both out Dec. 18, and already inspiring the latest cinematic portmanteau, “Dunesday,” in the popular lexicon, with both boasting premium formats and raking in millions in presales.
Will White, who studies film at Quinnipiac University, has already seen “The Odyssey” five times “in all the different formats,” including Imax.
“You could see every minute detail. You could see all the film grain. There’s someone actually in the box with the projector,” said White, who was at AMC Lincoln Square for his sixth screening.
He says there is nothing like the massive format, later explaining to The Washington Post via text: “Every time I’ve watched it, I feel like I’m alongside these characters whether it’s when they’re out at sea or in the belly of the horse, I feel like I’m experiencing everything they’re going through.”
The 2026 summer box office take is already the largest since 2020, and unadjusted for inflation, the largest ever. Most of that money comes from films that played in premium formats. Of the top 10 domestic grossing films of the year so far, all but three (“Obsession,” “The Devil Wears Prada 2″ and “Backrooms”) promoted specific Imax screenings.
While “Avengers” has already raked in $50 million in presales, “Dune: Part 3″ has one thing in its corner: exclusive access to the nation’s Imax screens for the film’s opening release.
Earlier this month, the Korean film “Hope” opened in 1,500 U.S. theaters, making it the widest release of a Korean-language film since 2019’s “Parasite.” The nearly three-hour epic mixes high-level action filmmaking, corny 1950s sci-fi world-building and body horror creature design.
It’s a film that plays best on a big screen, and as such saw a special one-night-only release in “premium formats” like 4DX, ScreenX and Dolby. Missing from that list is Imax, which is still largely showing “The Odyssey,” though it’s already caught on among 4DX lovers. (4DX is a kind of experiential show more akin to a theme park ride than a traditional movie theater.)
Speaking to The Post before the film’s U.S. release, writer-director Na Hong-jin (“The Wailing”) explained that his original idea for the film came from the need to see it in a theater. “Even from pre-pandemic times, we were questioning, will theaters, movie theaters, survive?” Na said. “So I wanted to create a movie that you want to watch on a big screen with all the details that would be worthy of a big screen.”
Abbie Alger is the lead programmer for the AFI Silver, an independent first-run and repertory theater in Silver Spring, Maryland. She has seen a growing trend of excitement around physical film projection and premium formats. “The frequency of these 70mm and 35mm releases has certainly increased over the past several years, I would say probably since ‘Oppenheimer,’” she says.
The Silver has the ability to project 70mm and 35mm prints and does so for new and old releases. Those releases have become a cash cow for the smaller theater. “With ‘The Odyssey’ we broke our all-time record for a first-run release,” Alger says.
Back in March the theater showed a 70mm print of “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” The release was a hit, and the Silver has since sold out screenings of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and showed “Batman” (1989) and “Aliens” (1986) earlier this month, all on 70mm.
Back outside the AMC Lincoln Center the doors are finally unlocked and the crowd starts to shuffle into the air-conditioned darkness.
Rivera said he already has a plan for the next big Imax release, “Dune: Part 3,” in December.
At the time of writing most the opening weekend tickets for “Dune” in 70mm Imax were sold out. If you want to get a ticket (and not sit in the first few rows at the AMC Lincoln Center or stand in a space typically reserved for patrons who use a wheelchair), you would probably have to wait until a 2:30 a.m. screening on Dec. 23, a Wednesday.
“I already got my tickets for that, 6 a.m.,” Rivera says. “What I’m thinking of doing for that is booking a hotel room nearby.”
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