The BFI IMAX has announced it will release another batch of tickets for Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster The Odyssey tomorrow after unprecedented demand saw its initial run sell out
The BFI IMAX has announced it will release another batch of tickets for Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster The Odyssey tomorrow after unprecedented demand saw its initial run sell out.
The cinema said it has “just about managed to squeeze in” additional early morning and late-night screenings from Tuesday, September 1. Tickets for the new screenings will go on sale at 2pm on Friday, July 31.
The announcement comes after huge demand saw the BFI IMAX at Waterloo – Britain’s biggest cinema screen – sell out all 173 scheduled IMAX 70mm screenings of The Odyssey through to September 10.
Across eight weeks, every one of those screenings sold out, with audience members reportedly travelling to London from locations including Singapore, Los Angeles and Toronto to experience the film in IMAX 70mm.
BFI IMAX programme manager Madeleine Mullett previously said: “The extraordinary demand for our IMAX 70mm presentation of The Odyssey, experienced as intended by the filmmakers, is ultimate proof of the appetite audiences have for cinema at its most authentic.”
The film has become a box office phenomenon, taking $264 million (£198.2 million) during its opening weekend and breaking several records. It also surpassed the BFI IMAX’s previous advance booking records, overtaking Dune: Part Two and Oppenheimer after selling 28,000 tickets and generating £750,000 in gross revenue within 24 hours of tickets going on sale.
The Odyssey is an adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic, starring Matt Damon as Odysseus, the King of Ithaca, on his perilous 10-year journey home following the Trojan War. It is the first feature film to be shot entirely using IMAX film cameras and also stars Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Samantha Morton, Zendaya and Charlize Theron.
The BFI IMAX is one of only three venues in the UK showing the film from an IMAX 70mm print, making it one of the most sought-after places to see Christopher Nolan’s latest film.
For those unable to secure tickets at the BFI, London’s Science Museum IMAX previously had limited availability for selected dates, while Cineworld Leicester Square IMAX continues to offer multiple daily screenings. However, the BFI’s 1.43:1 screen is one of the few in the world capable of presenting the full IMAX image for The Odyssey, making it the definitive venue for the most immersive version of the film.
