Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, the Oppenheimer director’s grand adaptation of the classic Greek myth, will be filmed entirely using Imax film cameras, marking a first for a commercial feature.

Nolan is an enthusiast of the large-screen format, which he has employed in Dunkirk, Interstellar, the Dark Knight series, and Tenet, as well as extensively in Oppenheimer. However, filming an entire feature using the notoriously large, noisy, and cumbersome Imax film cameras (as opposed to the lighter, quieter digital Imax cameras used in recent films like Thunderbolts* and the upcoming Superman) was previously impractical.

Following the success of Oppenheimer, which grossed over $190 million on Imax screens, accounting for about 20 percent of its total earnings, Nolan challenged the company to enhance its cameras, making them lighter and quieter, and to address issues with scanning and processing the cameras’ 70 mm film stock, allowing him to easily view dailies during shooting.

“Chris called me up and said, ‘If you can figure out how to solve the problems, I will make [Odyssey] 100 percent in Imax.’ And that’s what we’re doing,” said Imax CEO Rich Gelfond, speaking at the company’s annual press lunch in Cannes on Thursday. “He compelled us to rethink that side of our business, our film recorders, our film cameras.”