The battle for America’s limited supply of certified IMAX screens has become an increasingly fractious one in recent years, as studios have all quietly acknowledged that slapping their films onto bigger screens supported by louder sound systems is one of the only reliable ways to get audiences to shell out extra for a viewing. (It’s a more reliable money making strategy than trying to invent ever-more sexualized popcorn buckets, leastways.) Few directors are more in tune with the Canadian theater company’s whole deal, meanwhile, than Christopher Nolan, who not only favors the kinds of big, expansive shots that lend themselves to the biggest theatrical presentations possible, but also literally filmed his latest movie, The Odyssey, on the company’s 70mm cameras.
Which probably goes some way toward explaining why IMAX has decided that, sure, The Odyssey can have its screens for a little longer, as Variety reports that Nolan’s movie has just extended its run in the format. The film will now stay on IMAX through the end of September, where it’ll likely squeeze out at least some showings for both Resident Evil and Avengers Endgame: Encore, which we have to assume made somebody at Disney’s eye twitch just the teensiest bit. (The company was already mad enough that Dune: Part Three boxed Avengers: Doomsday out of IMAX theaters this December that most people assume it invented its own “Infinity Vision” theater grading scheme just to try to score some of that “premium showing” money off of moviegoers for itself.)
It’s hard to blame IMAX, though: The Odyssey has been the format’s biggest box office success ever, making more on the company’s screens than the vast majority of other movies make in theaters, period. (To the tune of $457 million and counting, more than doubling Avatar‘s previous record-setting IMAX haul back in 2009.) That includes $66 million alone from IMAX’s massive 70mm screens, of which there are only 41 in the world; call it marketing, or filmmaking brio, or just the natural human desire to see the biggest possible version of Matt Damon’s face, but audiences embraced the idea that The Odyssey on IMAX was an event, and the company is clearly happy to let the good times keep rolling for another month.
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