Nolan is Villeneuve's opening act now: The Odyssey hits IMAX 70mm a week before Dune

The Odyssey returns to roughly 1,000 theaters across the US and Canada on December 11, IMAX and IMAX 70mm included. The date is the whole story. Dune: Part Three opens December 18, shot for IMAX and claiming the same handful of 70mm projectors, so Christopher Nolan's Homer gets exactly one week before Denis Villeneuve's Arrakis moves in.

For anyone keeping score, that makes the most commercially successful director of the IMAX era the warm-up slot. The system Nolan built — shoot for the giant format, train audiences to chase the film stock — now has two residents, and in December the schedule belongs to the other one. Even the pre-show confirms the order of succession: exclusive Dune: Part Three footage plays in front of the 70mm Odyssey showings, per the film's official account.

There are 25 IMAX 70mm screens in the United States. From December 11 they belong to Nolan for one week — then Villeneuve takes the keys.

How we got to a timeshare

The Odyssey opened July 17 and refused to leave. It set an IMAX opening record of $51.8 million, its 70mm run was extended and revived through the fall, and of its $1.8 billion worldwide, about $550 million came from IMAX screens alone — money earned on a format with 41 venues on the planet. On r/movies, the five-month campaign has become its own joke:

"Odysseus is gonna be stuck in cinemas longer than he was in Troy…"

The December 11 return is pitched as a holiday encore and an awards-season reminder. In practice it's also a handoff ceremony: the projectors get warmed up, the Dune footage plays, and the audience that camped out for 70mm tickets in July gets told where to line up next.

The one-week window

If you missed The Odyssey in its native format — and with 25 US screens, most people did — this is the last realistic call. Dune: Part Three arrives December 18 against Avengers: Doomsday, and IMAX has every incentive to hand Villeneuve the premium screens for the holidays and keep them his for weeks.

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Two directors now constitute the entire 70mm theatrical economy, and they're sharing a December. Nolan goes first, Villeneuve closes. The last time a Nolan film gave up its IMAX 70mm screens, Oppenheimer, it clawed its way back five months later for an Oscar lap. If The Odyssey follows that playbook, expect the projectors to change hands one more time in February, right around nominations.

Previously we wrote: Remember 'superhero fatigue'? Avengers: Doomsday just passed a million presales — with no IMAX