Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Breaks BFI Imax Records With 28,000 Tickets Sold In First 24 Hours

BFI Imax, the UK’s largest screen, has sold 28,000 tickets for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in 24 hours, breaking first day on sale records for the venue with a total gross of £750,000.

This follows four opening weekend screenings that had previously sold out in under an hour a year in advance, including a special midnight showing to kickstart a weekend of round-the-clock screenings.

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.

Starry epic The Odyssey, the first feature to be shot entirely on IMAX 70mm with IMAX cameras, opens on July 17th.

As one of the foundational poetic texts of Western literature, the story follows Odysseus, King of Ithaca, on his dangerous journey home after the Trojan war.

The ancient Greek epic illustrates a true hero’s journey as the titular figure 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, who unravels a wedding train that she weaves evey night in the event that one of the suitors who have taken over her home ends up marrying her should her husband not return.

Cast includes Matt Damon, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o and Charlize Theron.

In 2023, BFI Imax reported the biggest opening weekend box office result of any screen in the UK for Nolan’s last film, Oppenheimer, also making it the number one Imax screen in the country with a weekend gross of £207,677.

The London venue was also the second-highest-grossing IMAX screen globally on the film’s opening weekend, behind the TCL Chinese Theatre, Los Angeles, which has almost double the capacity.

The film ended its initial theatrical run at BFI Imax alone with a gross of £2.2M.