So 6.20am isn’t a regular session time in cinemas, but there’s been nothing standard about the relationship between Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and IMAX.
Back in July 2025, a full year out from the opening of the swords-and-sandals epic in movie theatres, tickets to see the film in the large screen’s 1570 format were already selling out around the globe. Each time more IMAX seats went on sale, often crashing cinema websites in the process, they were snapped up with the enthusiasm of Odysseus’ men tearing into Circe’s feast.
That excitement is understandable. In the 21 years since Batman Begins gave the British filmmaker his first blockbuster, a new release from Nolan has been an event to seek out on the biggest screen possible. His fondness for IMAX – for shooting his features with IMAX cameras, often while making pioneering advancements, and for giving audiences an experience to savour on the format’s towering canvas – is unparalleled.
Indeed, The Odyssey is the first feature ever to be filmed entirely on IMAX 70mm. To meet the immense demand to watch the film as its director intended – or as close to it, given that only 41 IMAX sites worldwide can screen 70mm – some Australian IMAX locations have been adding not just late-night showings to their roster, but also pre-dawn sessions.
If you’re a Brisbanite, however, you might be waking up even earlier to make your own odyssey to Queensland’s only IMAX on the Gold Coast.
IMAX and The Odyssey – quick links
Coming soon: more giant screens
The fact that there’s even a single IMAX in the Sunshine State is an improvement on when Nolan’s seven-time Oscar-winner Oppenheimer released in 2023. That there’s more than one IMAX in Australia right now falls into the same category.
When Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr’s Oscar-winning performances were among cinema’s hottest tickets, IMAX Melbourne was the country’s sole venue. IMAX Sydney wouldn’t reopen for a few more months, following its seven-year rebuild. Brisbane’s IMAX shuttered two decades prior, as did Adelaide’s and Perth’s. Even Dreamworld’s IMAX stopped screening the format in 2010.
To catch The Odyssey, Australians now have 10 IMAX sites to choose from, thanks to a boom expansion period via partnerships with local cinema chains.
Dendy Canberra opened its IMAX screen in late 2024, as did Event Cinemas Pacific Fair on the Gold Coast. Village Cinemas then added IMAX to its Fountain Gate theatre in Melbourne in 2025, while Event brought the format to Innaloo in Perth, plus Hoyts upgraded two Victorian (Melbourne Central and Chadstone), one New South Wales (Blacktown) and one Western Australian (Carousel) picture palaces.
More are still to come. Towards the end of 2024, IMAX revealed a goal of launching nearly 40 screens around Australia – and both EVT, which owns Event Cinemas, and Hoyts have been dropping news of their own to reach towards that tally.
In early 2025, EVT unveiled an agreement to add IMAX to three more Event theatres in 2026, alongside a further venue in 2027. Mere months later, Hoyts signalled IMAX plans for up to five cinemas; after launching four before the end of April this year, it announced another 10.
Massive times for massive cinema
Exactly when and where Event and Hoyts’ next IMAX screens will open is yet to be revealed, but the rapid growth of Aussie locations is being fuelled by demand.
Before The Odyssey earned IMAX its biggest opening weekend in Australia of all time (a feat also matched in the likes of France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Mexico and Argentina), local movie lovers were flocking to the format.
In 2024, IMAX earned more per Aussie screen than in any other country – almost twice as much, in fact, with just four screens in market, two of which only opened in December that year. Courtesy of $18.6 million in box-office takings, 2025 marked IMAX’s best year in Australia yet.
Aided by Project Hail Mary earlier this year, Australia was already IMAX’s ninth biggest market in 2026 by late April. Hoyts’ Chadstone IMAX, which launched at the end of 2025, was also one of three Aussie locations in the format’s top 30 globally.
ScreenHub: Christopher Nolan was the wrong director for The Odyssey
While The Odyssey is now IMAX Melbourne’s highest grossing film ever, completely selling out six weeks of sessions – 70,900 admissions for $3.18 million at the box office, a spokesperson tells ScreenHub – it joined five other titles from the 2020s in the top 11. Oppenheimer has slipped from first to second, with Avatar: The Way of Water sitting fourth, Dune: Part Two in sixth, Dune: Part One placing eighth and Avatar: Fire and Ash perched at number nine.
(The oldest film in IMAX Melbourne’s top 11 is Nolan’s own The Dark Knight, from 2008, in 11th place; 2009’s Avatar is third; Nolan’s 2014 release Interstellar ranks fifth; 2015’s Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens is seventh; and Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises from 2012 is 10th.)
A true epic
Australians are heading to IMAX in droves for more than The Odyssey, then – even if IMAX Melbourne celebrated the film’s fifth day of release by adding extra sessions from late August and into early September. The cinema has also been welcoming not only locals, but also patrons from around the country, and as far overseas as Germany, to watch the Matt Damon-led hit on the planet’s largest 1.43:1 screen.
Although Nolan’s latest made 18% of its first four-day box-office return from Aussie IMAX, IMAX 70mm, regular 70mm, and motion- and special effects-enhanced 4DX sessions, The Odyssey is proving huge in all cinemas, too.
Grossing $13.4 million nationwide Thursday 16 July to Sunday 19 July, it scored the biggest opening weekend in the country this year, the third-biggest in history for Universal (after 2015’s Jurassic World and Fast & Furious 7) and the distributor’s best since the Covid pandemic. The Odyssey also delivered Universal its biggest opening day ever in Australia for an original, non-franchise film.
The source material, the almost-every-famous-face-imaginable cast, that Nolan is fresh from winning his first Best Director Oscar for Oppenheimer, his impressive track record from 2000’s Guy Pearce-starring Memento onwards: due to all of the above, The Odyssey was always fated to be an immense cinema event.
Throw in Nolan’s knack for crafting stunning big-screen spectacles – a talent honed through and augmented by his use of IMAX, right back to when The Dark Knight became the first major feature to be shot with high-resolution IMAX cameras – and viewers were always destined to be clamouring to catch the movie as soon as they can and wherever they can.
At Event Cinemas, ticket pre-sales for The Odyssey are ‘running at roughly twice the pace Oppenheimer had reached at the same point in its release,’ Daniel McCabe, Event Cinemas’ General Manager of Cinema Operations Australia, tells ScreenHub.
‘IMAX is where that demand is most concentrated,’ McCabe says, with ‘almost two thirds of all pre-sales for IMAX sessions specifically’ – hence the midnight and early-morning screenings.
‘IMAX Sydney is selling out almost every session time, even at 6am, showing people are building their schedules around getting an IMAX seat,’ he adds, while also noting that the strong demand for The Odyssey extends to Event’s ‘other premium formats such as V-Max, Gold Class, 4DX and [panoramic 270-degree projection] SCREENX’.
When will IMAX return to Brisbane?
Seats are also filling swiftly for Event’s Queensland IMAX location at Pacific Fair, including for 6.20am sessions on both weekdays and weekends. At the time of writing, the break-of-day starts – adding an extra layer of darkness to sitting in a darkened theatre – continue until the first Sunday in August.
Less than a week into The Odyssey’s season, most Brisbane cinephiles have at least one friend who has already made the trek for a session at the Gold Coast venue. Just as common is knowing someone who’s planning to take the drive for their second viewing, after initially catching the film in Brisbane in its first few days of release.
Also showing everything from Baz Luhrmann’s EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert and the Gold Coast-made Mortal Kombat II to The Bride! and Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu so far in 2026, Pacific Fair’s IMAX is worth the trip.
If film fans are willing to head down the highway to enjoy the format, though, surely we’d ensure that a new Brisbane IMAX consistently attracted a crowd? More than two decades after the city’s biggest screen, at South Bank, switched from IMAX to a discount cinema chain, isn’t capitalising upon IMAX’s current Aussie success with a Brisbane comeback long overdue?
Queensland provided 19.7% of The Odyssey’s total box-office in all formats over its first four days, to the tune of $2.96 million, bested only by New South Wales’ $5.35 million and Victoria’s $4.29 million. Imagine how that figure might’ve increased if the Sunshine State was home to more than one IMAX, as NSW is with two and Victoria with four.
Asked by ScreenHub about how Brisbane fits into their already-announced IMAX expansion plans, or other Queensland venues, both EVT and Hoyts didn’t have any additional details to provide at present.
‘Regarding future expansion, whilst we are unable to confirm any new IMAX locations currently, EVT is always looking into expansion opportunities with our global partners, including in Brisbane and across Queensland,’ says McCabe.
In the time since Brisbanites were last able to watch a movie in IMAX without leaving town, Odysseus could’ve spent a decade fighting the Trojan War, then another decade battling a cyclops and giants, encountering a witch, venturing to the underworld, evading sirens, navigating storms and shacking up on the beach with a nymph on his journey back to Ithaca.
The gods eventually helped him home – here’s hoping that the film deities can again bless Brisbane with an IMAX screen, too.
