‘The Odyssey’ Just Had the Best Monday of the Year — Unless You’re a Fan Paying $10,000 for a Movie Ticket

Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” pulled in more than $17 million domestically on Monday, July 20, marking the best Monday box office performance of 2026 so far and beating Toy Story 5’s Memorial Day-adjacent Monday haul. The film had already opened to $124.5 million domestically and $264.1 million globally the prior weekend, Nolan’s best opening ever, with premium large formats accounting for 53% of its domestic total and IMAX screens alone delivering $51.8 million worldwide [1, 2].

The catch is that true IMAX 70mm presentations, the format Nolan shot and intended the film for, are running in only about 25 theaters in the entire United States. IMAX says it hasn’t manufactured new 70mm film projectors in roughly 50 years, and the original design blueprints were never fully preserved, forcing the company to spend over a year hunting down and restoring abandoned or broken projectors rather than building new ones [3]. That scarcity has sent resale prices for 70mm tickets soaring, with some sellers listing pairs for $2,000 and one eBay listing asking $10,000 for a block of opening-weekend seats to the $33 face-value screenings; sold-out showtimes at some theaters, including 2 a.m. slots, now stretch into August [4, 5].

Why It Sucks:

Christopher Nolan, Universal & IMAX

• A rare theatrical win becomes an engineering headache. Nolan and IMAX delivered a genuine box-office triumph, but it’s now inseparable from a scalping story and format-scarcity complaints that dominate the headlines instead of the film itself [1, 3].
• Nobody wanted to fight this weekend, and it still gets messy. Studios deliberately avoided releasing competing films against “The Odyssey,” yet the film’s dominance is now being read as proof theatrical exhibition is broken, not fixed, because only a fraction of theaters can actually capitalize on it [2, 3].
• The format that makes the film special is also its liability. IMAX spent over a year restoring decades-old projectors just to mount 25 U.S. screens, meaning the format at the center of the marketing campaign is structurally incapable of meeting demand [3].

Moviegoers & Fans

• A $33 ticket is going for $10,000 on eBay. Resellers are exploiting the 70mm scarcity to flip tickets at up to 300 times face value, with fans reporting sites crashing during the scramble to buy legitimately [4, 5].
• Seeing the film “the right way” now means a 2 a.m. showing. With standard showtimes sold out through August at some 70mm locations, theaters have added overnight screenings just to meet demand, forcing genuine fans into all-night outings to see the format as intended [5].
• Scammers are cashing in on the chaos. Buyers on resale sites report being sold fake tickets by scalpers who vanish and reappear under new accounts once reported, on top of the inflated prices legitimate resellers are already charging [4].

Theaters Without IMAX 70mm Capability

• A record-breaking film, and they can’t cash in. With only about 25 U.S. theaters equipped for true 70mm projection, the vast majority of exhibitors are stuck offering standard formats while a handful of flagship locations capture the scarcity premium and the headlines [3, 6].
• The infrastructure gap isn’t something they can fix. IMAX itself says exhibitors aren’t building 70mm-capable auditoriums because of high construction costs, meaning smaller and regional theaters are locked out of this windfall by economics, not choice [3].
• Even single-format theaters aren’t spared the strain. Reports of projector failures, such as one at an AMC IMAX location in San Antonio, show that the surge in demand is straining equipment even at theaters that do have premium screens [6].

Sources & Citations:

[1] Deadline: Box Office: ‘The Odyssey’ Nears Best Monday Of 2026 With $17 Million+
[2] Variety: The Odyssey Box Office: Christopher Nolan Film Stuns in Opening Weekend
[3] Variety: Why Aren’t There More IMAX 70mm Screens for ‘The Odyssey’?
[4] Variety: Imax Scalpers: ‘Odyssey’ Fans Ripped Off By Scammers
[5] Gothamist: ‘The Odyssey’ IMAX 70mm screenings in NYC are a Trojan horse for ticket scalpers
[6] KSAT: Projector failure at AMC IMAX Rivercenter Mall disrupts ‘The Odyssey’ screenings in San Antonio