Christopher Nolan’s latest epic, “The Odyssey,” had an opening weekend at the box office worthy of the gods.
The movie, based on the centuries-old poem by Homer, took in the third-best domestic opening of the year with $124.5 million and $264.1 million globally.
That’s not a shock to most in the business. Not only does the movie feature a star-studded cast (Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, and Zendaya), but it’s helmed by an Oscar-winning director with a fan base of his own. Another reason for the film’s success is IMAX, Nolan’s preferred format for his work.
For years, Nolan made it his mission to shoot portions of his films, from his Batman trilogy to his Oscar-winning “Oppenheimer,” so that they are formatted for bigger screens. With “The Odyssey,” he went a step further, pushing IMAX to build a quieter version of its noisy camera to shoot the entire movie.
“When he called me, I always try to make our organization do what he wants,” IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond told Business Insider of Nolan on Monday. “My answer to all of his questions is, ‘Let’s try to make it happen.'”
With “The Odyssey” touted as the first movie ever shot entirely on IMAX cameras, it was a success for IMAX before a single frame was shown. Almost a year before its opening, presales of IMAX 70mm showings sold out within an hour, earning the movie $1.5 million.
Things only got better once the movie came out. The company reported earning $51.8 million globally, more than 20% of the movie’s worldwide box office. Of that, IMAX 70mm screenings generated an astounding $6.3 million from just 41 screens worldwide, an average of $153,000 per screen.
Gelfond spoke to Business Insider about the box-office success of “The Odyssey,” why it’s so expensive to create IMAX 70mm theaters, and the report that the company is for sale.
Business Insider: “The Odyssey” did huge numbers at the weekend box office. Was it beyond what you expected?
Rich Gelfond: Out of everyone at IMAX, I was the most bullish. I went into this thinking it was going to be bigger than what everyone else thought it was going to be, but some of the craziness and competition for IMAX tickets is even more extreme than I could have imagined.
Is there one box-office stat that surprised you?
The BFI in London is sold out through week six, and they put week seven and eight tickets on sale, and they have sold out a lot of those shows already. This is two months from now!
The one number that jumps out to me is IMAX accounting for over 20% of the movie’s global opening. This isn’t something that happened overnight. IMAX has been building its brand for decades, but it’s also how Christopher Nolan has elevated the use of it. Do you think you’ll ever have that unique collaboration you have with Nolan with another filmmaker?
Chris is a unicorn, and it takes time and collaboration, and really, it’s almost like a team. Learning to anticipate what the other one wants. So right now, it’s a very special relationship.
But I do think there will be other relationships. They will be different, but I think they can be equally successful. I’ll give you examples. We did “Sinners” with Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan, we also worked with Michael on “Creed III,” which he directed, and we’re going to do “The Thomas Crown Affair” with him early next year, which he also directed.
Denis Villeneuve, we did “Dune 2,” we’re doing “Dune 3,” his next film is James Bond, and we’ll see where that goes. These are really gifted filmmakers we’re working with.
Did you ever anticipate that Nolan would come to you and ask that you build a camera so he could film an entire movie with it?
It didn’t shock me. Chris is a very innovative director always looking for the next thing. So when he told me he was running the camera backward for some scenes in “Tenet,” was I shocked? No. When he said he dropped one of them out of a helicopter or floated them in the water, does that shock me? No. He’s always trying new things.
Have other filmmakers come to you and said they want to shoot their entire movie with the IMAX camera Nolan used?
Yes. Chris was filming a year ago, and in that time, people have approached us about that camera. And Denis [Villeneuve] used the camera in “Dune 3” for a few sequences.
The IMAX 70mm projection has become a hot ticket, especially for Christopher Nolan movies. There are only 41 theaters in the world that have them. Is there an interest in upping that number?
Definitely, there is an interest.
There are a lot of limitations. The first one is an economic limitation. The IMAX film projectors are like Rolls-Royce cars. They are top of the line. They are vintage. They last for a very long time. And a very specific cinephile audience is really dying to see them and is willing to travel great distances or pay a premium price.
But when you look at the economics of those theaters, they don’t work over hundreds of locations, and the reason is it needs a certain aspect ratio to be shown in, and that’s expensive to build the space in the theater to show it. The maintenance on them also costs a lot of money.
Do I wish I could do more? Yes, I do. And we will continue to look at whether we can. Is this a market where you can do thousands of them? No.
Would you be shocked if “The Odyssey” was still showing in North America on IMAX screens in September?
I’ll make a bet with you that there will be IMAX screens showing “The Odyssey” by the end of September!
With the “Avengers: Doomsday” trailer dropping, what are your thoughts on Disney’s Infinity Vision?
It’s not a new technological advance in any way; it’s a marketing initiative, because Disney could not play “Avengers” in IMAX because we had committed to “Dune 3.” Disney really wanted to figure out a way that they could market to audiences. So they created this initiative.
It’s not going to open an additional projection system. It’s not going to add any special look or feel to the film. It is a way to market “Avengers.” We’ll find out if it works or not.
You talk to studios constantly. Did Disney give you a heads up that they were doing this before they went public with it?
They sort of gave me a heads up. They were respectful.
[Ed Note: Disney did not respond for comment.]
Can you address the report that IMAX is up for sale?
No, I can’t. All I can say is when we have a sale, we’ll announce it; we’re a public company. We’ve been approached numerous times over the years, and when we have a signed deal, we’ll talk about it.
Do you think Wall Street evaluates IMAX properly?
At times it does, and at times it doesn’t. The way it doesn’t is it evaluates us sometimes on a week-to-week basis. A movie-to-movie basis. But there are certain movies, specifically “The Odyssey,” that aren’t movies; they are one of one. So the numbers this movie is going to do for IMAX are going to be among the best numbers in IMAX history, and they won’t only affect the box office but will affect our signings, our installations, and our audience.
For example, Regal’s LA Live opened as an IMAX theater around six months ago, and for the first six months, they did pretty good numbers, about $800,000. This weekend, it played “The Odyssey,” and it did $275,000. So I think it will get a lot of awareness with people near that theater and lead to repeat business.
Movies that stand out like this have a lot of other intangible benefits. But Wall Street looked at the opening for “Minions & Monsters” and it wasn’t what it thought and traded my stock down. “The Odyssey” is multiples of what anybody thought, so I think it’s a dangerous game to evaluate us on a week-by-week basis. We’re a portfolio.
Decades ago, you spent years taking countless flights to China and other parts of the world to expand the IMAX brand. Did you ever think we’d end up in a world where people aren’t going to the movies unless they are seeing it on IMAX?
I’m trying to live in the moment, but to answer your question, if you read a mission statement for IMAX written 30 years ago, it would say, “When people wake up in the morning and they want to decide what they want to do, they are going to say, ‘Let’s go to the IMAX.'”
I want the IMAX brand to be as important as the piece of content. So, yes, I thought this was not only possible, it was the goal. And to get to the goal, you need some luck, and you need all kinds of intangible things, but as an organization, we engineered to get to this point.
There are regions of the world that don’t have IMAX screens. Is there a specific region you want to visit next?
There are lots of countries where we don’t have sufficient presence. We just opened a theater a few months ago in Iraq, and I have to confess, I didn’t say, “We have to go to Iraq.” It’s beyond our imaginations.
For example, India only has 30 IMAX theaters. China has 800. So we could put a lot more theaters in India. South America is not nearly penetrated to what it could be. So we could put a lot more there.
Some of my favorite IMAX screens are in Western Europe. Germany has 10 IMAX theaters. I would like to think Germany could be bigger. A few years ago, Australia only had 2 IMAX theaters, now we have 10. So we have a dream.
People said it works in the US and works in China, but it wouldn’t work in, say, Japan. Guess what — it has worked great in Japan. It took us a long time to penetrate Japan. It’s a country that believes strongly in its own vision, and now we have 50 IMAX screens, and it’s one of our fastest-growing markets in the world.
You’re putting IMAX in self-driving cars? Are we going to watch IMAX movies in cars now?
To do that, we’d have to build bigger cars. No, with Goer Dynamics in China, certain elements of the IMAX experience can be replicated regardless of the size of the screen. Goer came to us because they felt our brand and experience could differentiate automakers from standard entertainment in cars and create something special.
Give me an example.
Because they will be in autonomous vehicles, people will be sitting in their cars, and instead of looking out the window, they will watch really well-formatted movies with great sound while on the way to visit grandma. The dream is to make this work in China, and if it works there, see where else it can work.
Now that a movie has been shot entirely with an IMAX camera, what’s the next big swing?
I’ll go back to what I dreamed of 30 years ago. When people wake up in the morning, they don’t say which movie they are going to see; they are going to say, “Let’s go to the IMAX.”
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
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