The hype train for Christopher Nolan’s movie The Odyssey is already screaming down the tracks. Despite a release date of July 17, 2026, some movie theaters are already selling tickets to the first IMAX screenings of the film. The pre-sales are for select showings of the 70mm IMAX version of the movie in a handful of cities in the U.S. and Canada. While this might seem like a mere marketing gimmick (who needs to buy tickets a year out?), many showings have already sold out. As of this writing, 13 of the 16 U.S. theaters offering pre-sale tickets are fully booked.
You’re probably thinking that the only people eager to buy movie tickets a year early are people who plan to sell them later, and you’re probably right: Many of the tickets seem to have been sold to scalpers. A quick check of eBay reveals numerous auctions of The Odyssey passes are already live, with opening bids of between $200 and $250. As the release date approaches, look for prices on the secondary market to go much higher.
Nolan’s adaptation of the Homeric epic will be the first feature film shot entirely in IMAX, the director’s preferred format. It stars Matt Damon as Odysseus and tells the story of the Greek king’s perilous, 10-year journey home to Ithaca following the Trojan war (assuming Nolan sticks to the source material).
Universal’s marketing department is clearly staking out a long-term strategy for hyping The Odyssey as a high-quality, prestige movie by focusing on the IMAX release as a monumental event in cinema history. Among movie nerds, IMAX is considered the only way to really see Nolan’s last movie, Oppenheimer; nearly a fifth of its $975 million gross came from IMAX screenings.
What do you think so far?
If you’re a more casual film fan (and you don’t fancy paying a couple hundred bucks or more to see a movie), tickets for other screenings of The Odyssey in lesser film formats will undoubtedly be available for pre-order (much) closer to the movie’s release date. Or you could just wait a week and see if after the crowds have thinned out.
