Sir Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has broken the BFI (British Film Institute) Imax record for an opening weekend grossing £219,867 from Friday to Sunday.
The venue, located in London’s Waterloo area, has already sold 82,000 tickets for the film grossing £2,169,882, making it the cinema’s third highest grossing film ever already.
The Odyssey beat Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), which grossed £216,454, and Sir Christopher’s last film Oppenheimer (2023), which grossed £207,677, to achieve the cinema’s record opening weekend.
Across eight weeks, 173 consecutive Imax 70mm screenings have sold out entirely according to the BFI, with audience members reportedly travelling to London from locations including Singapore, Los Angeles and Toronto to see the film.
BFI Imax programme manager Madeleine Mullett said: “As the only cinema in the UK to hold a complete archive of Christopher Nolan’s Imax 70mm filmography, now including The Odyssey, we are proud to be the home of Christopher Nolan on film.
“Across the BFI, our commitment to preserving and celebrating celluloid, alongside the filmmakers who continue to champion this format, speaks to the enduring power of storytelling and the unique communal experience of seeing film on film.
“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 Odyssey, which is an adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic, with Matt Damon starring as Odysseus, the Greek king of Ithaca, as he makes his perilous 10-year journey home after the Trojan War, is the first feature film to be shot entirely with Imax film cameras.
It also beat the previous BFI Imax presale record held by Dune: Part Two (2024), which generated £366,000 in its first 24 hours on sale, and Oppenheimer, which took £254,000 over the same period, selling 28,000 tickets in 24 hours and generating £750,000 in gross revenue.
Introducing the world premiere at the venue, Sir Christopher said: “This is a very special venue for us, it was in this very venue that I met the person to whom the film is dedicated, my friend and Imax mentor, David Keighley.
“I wish he were with us here tonight, but I know he’d be very proud of us and very proud of the work that Patricia (Keighley) and her whole team has done finishing the film.
“And very excited for you guys to be the first audience in the world to see it projected in this wonderful theatre on this wonderful screen from an Imax film print.”
The film 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 Imax 70mm prints in the UK.
