Indian audiences may be ready to spend Rs 1,000-3,000 for IMAX tickets to Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, but they still won't experience the film in the format the director intended.
The film is the first feature shot entirely in IMAX 15/70mm (1570) film — a format Nolan has long championed for its unmatched image quality and scale.
However, India does not have a single theatre capable of projecting 1570 film.
Only 41 cinemas worldwide can screen the format, including IMAX Melbourne, which houses a 17-kilometre, 240-kg film reel of The Odyssey. Many cinephiles are travelling abroad to experience the film in its original format.
Indian viewers will instead watch the film in digital IMAX, where the taller 1570 image is cropped to fit a wider, shorter screen. As a result, portions of Nolan's carefully composed visuals — from sweeping landscapes to large-scale battle sequences and towering imagery — will not be visible as originally framed.
The 1570 format uses 70mm film running horizontally with 15 perforations per frame, delivering significantly higher resolution than standard digital projection. Nolan also worked with IMAX to develop a soundproof housing for the 180-kg cameras, allowing dialogue to be recorded directly on the format for the first time despite the cameras requiring film reloads roughly every three minutes.
While India has 34 operational IMAX screens across cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Kolkata, Pune, Ahmedabad and Lucknow, all will screen The Odyssey in digital IMAX rather than the full 1570 presentation.
Based on Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey stars Matt Damon as Odysseus alongside Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong'o, Charlize Theron, and an ensemble cast.
Co-produced by Nolan and Emma Thomas, the film releases worldwide on July 17.