AMC’s ticketing app briefly paused Thursday and users reported wait times as long as an hour when IMAX and other premium large-format tickets for the odyssey movie went on sale, while Fandango’s site also appeared to be dragging. Moviegoers trying to reserve seats for the high-end screenings found themselves waiting — and, in many cases, locked out of the few true 70mm IMAX runs available.
The scale of the rush was immediate: opening-weekend IMAX 70mm screenings that were first offered last summer sold out quickly, and some premium IMAX 70mm tickets are priced at more than $30. There are only 30 true 70mm IMAX theaters in the United States, nine in Canada and six elsewhere in the world, placing a hard cap on the number of seats that can be shown in the format Nolan chose for the film. AMC, the world’s largest exhibition chain and holder of the most IMAX screens in the U.S., briefly saw its systems strain under the demand; many theaters have already responded by adding extra showtimes after initial sellouts.
Christopher Nolan made the technical choice at the center of the rush explicit: he shot the feature entirely in IMAX’s 70mm format and has repeatedly argued that the format places audiences inside the action. Nolan has described his approach as visualizing the film as an audience member and then trying to take them there, even saying he wants to put viewers "into that horse" and "on the deck of Odysseus’s ship." He has called IMAX 15/70 the highest quality imaging format available. The Odyssey, produced with a $250 million budget and starring Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Anne Hathaway and (appearing in the credits) Robert Pattinson, is being released by Universal and is set to open July 17, with some theaters offering early screenings on July 16.
The friction was predictable and immediate: fans complained that the difficulty of reserving tickets and long queue times made seeing the film in their preferred format unusually hard. The ticketing pause on AMC and reports of Fandango lag underline how concentrated demand for a single premium run can overwhelm systems and frustrate buyers who traveled the sale window precisely to secure one of the limited 70mm seats. The pattern mirrors past events in which high-demand releases in premium formats have pushed exhibitors to expand schedules, rather than immediately solve the underlying scarcity.
What comes next is straightforward and narrow: with only a few dozen true 70mm IMAX houses and many initial runs already sold out last summer, pressure on 70mm seats is likely to persist through the film’s rollout. The immediate practical takeaway for buyers is also clear from the market and exhibitors’ responses — expect more added showtimes, and if a true 70mm IMAX screening isn’t available at your local theater, IMAX with Laser 4K is the next-best option. The Odyssey opens July 17 (early screenings July 16); given the limited footprint of true 70mm IMAX screens and the speed of early sellouts, the remaining weeks before opening will determine whether ticketing systems keep up with demand or continue to leave some viewers waiting in long online queues.
