Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey sold 28,000 tickets for BFI Imax in the first 24 hours, setting a new first-day on-sale record for the venue with a total gross of £750,000, as its July 17 release approaches.
The first day on sale at BFI Imax didn’t just move fast—it vanished. In 24 hours, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey sold 28,000 tickets for the UK’s largest screen, breaking the venue’s first day on-sale record with a total gross of £750,000.
That pace is landing on top of an earlier burst of demand: four opening weekend screenings had previously sold out in under an hour a year in advance. The rollout even included a special midnight showing to kickstart a weekend built for round-the-clock screenings.
The money tells its own story. The film’s first day takings have leapfrogged Dune: Part Two, which took £366,000 gross in the first 24 hours of on sale at the venue, and Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which took £254,000 gross in the same timeframe.
As The Odyssey prepares to open on July 17th, the scale is part of why the excitement is so immediate. It is the first feature to be shot entirely on Imax 70mm with Imax cameras—an approach that turns the screen at BFI Imax into the point. not a backdrop. The venue’s history with Nolan is already etched into its own sales record: in 2023. BFI Imax reported the biggest opening weekend box office result of any screen in the UK for Nolan’s last film Oppenheimer. while also making it the number one Imax screen in the country with a weekend gross of £207. 677. That London run also became the second-highest grossing Imax screen globally on the film’s opening weekend. behind the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles—whose capacity is almost double. Oppenheimer later ended its initial theatrical run at BFI Imax with a gross of £2.2M.
The reason the new frenzy is taking off goes beyond format. The Odyssey draws on one of the foundational poetic texts of Western literature. following Odysseus. King of Ithaca. on his dangerous journey home after the Trojan war. The ancient Greek epic sets up the kind of homecoming that costs: Odysseus faces Polyphemus the Cyclops. Sirens. the nymph Calypso. and the witch goddess Circe in the treacherous oceans that separate him from his island home and wife Penelope.
Back in Ithaca, Penelope’s life is measured in waiting. The story describes how she unravels a wedding train that she weaves every night in the event that one of the suitors who has taken over her home ends up marrying her should her husband not return.
The cast reads like a headline of its own—Matt Damon, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o, and Charlize Theron.
For BFI Imax. the question now isn’t whether people want to see The Odyssey—it’s how quickly they can find a seat before the next set of screenings fills up. With 28. 000 tickets already sold in the first 24 hours and £750. 000 in first-day gross secured. the venue’s record is no longer a prediction. It’s a scoreboard already rewritten.
Christopher Nolan The Odyssey BFI Imax Imax 70mm Imax cameras ticket sales London cinema 28 000 tickets £750 000 gross Dune: Part Two Oppenheimer
Wait so they sold 28,000 tickets in one day?? That’s insane lol
I don’t even get it, like it sounds like the venue just instantly sold out so how is that a new record? Also why do they keep saying Imax 70mm like regular theaters aren’t good enough.
BFI IMAX always goes crazy for Nolan but 28,000 in 24 hours seems fake like maybe they counted reservations or something? And the article says it’s shot on IMAX 70mm which, cool, but I feel like the ticket price is what’s doing the heavy lifting.
Nolan does this every time. First day on sale record, sold out in under an hour, midnight showing, meanwhile I’m over here trying to find a seat and it’s like nope. They should’ve warned people sooner because now everyone’s acting shocked like it wasn’t coming. Also Dune vs Oppenheimer numbers—so which one actually made more overall at the end?