Imax China is preparing to dedicate the vast majority of its nearly 800-screen network to Christopher Nolan‘s “The Odyssey” when the film opens in mainland China on Aug. 14, with CEO Daniel Manwaring telling Variety that audience anticipation for the release “is going to be enormous.”
“I’m expecting a very large majority of our entire network, if not all of our network, that first week will be playing ‘The Odyssey,’” Manwaring says.
Nolan and star Matt Damon are set to arrive in Beijing on July 30 for what Manwaring describes as the first-ever red carpet event held for a commercial film at the China National Film Museum in Beijing, a government institution that also hosted the original Chinese launch of “Avatar” in Imax’s early years in the country.
Two screenings are planned in Beijing, alongside a separate event at an Imax theater at Universal Beijing Resort. “We haven’t seen enthusiasm for a film like this in quite some time,” says Manwaring, noting that he’s personally been receiving “50 to 60 WeChats” every day of people requesting tickets for the movie.
Previews begin Aug. 1 and 2 in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, with one screening per day ahead of the wide release. Manwaring notes that Imax China is already “firing on all cylinders” thanks to strong pre-sales on “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” two weeks earlier, but he does distinguish between the two films’ audiences, calling “The Odyssey” “more of a first-tier city type of film” and comparing the geographic split to North America, where “the best performance of ‘Odyssey’ is most likely going to be New York, L.A., Chicago.”
Imax’s early box office share in Hong Kong and Taiwan has already topped 30% in both markets, with combined receipts there approaching half a million dollars — “a lot for small, tiny, island markets,” Manwaring says.
According to ticketing agency Maoyan Pro, cumulative “want to see” registrations for “The Odyssey” had surpassed 252,000 as of July 24, putting it ahead of every other upcoming imported title tracked by the platform. Maoyan Pro data shows early interest concentrated among users in tier-one and tier-two cities and among moderate-to-frequent moviegoers. For comparison, Maoyan Pro’s want-to-see tally for “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” stands at 810,000, versus 234,000 for “Minions & Monsters,” 203,000 for “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” 189,000 for “Toy Story 5” and 115,000 for “Backrooms.” Among local titles, “Kung Fu Soccer” leads with 649,000.
Pre-sales for “The Odyssey” have not yet opened in mainland China, though Maoyan Pro notes that recent Hollywood imports “Minions & Monsters” and “Toy Story 5” each surpassed RMB14 million ($2.1 million) in pre-sales, with “Project Hail Mary” surpassing RMB12 million ($1.8 million). Maoyan Pro also points to “Oppenheimer” as a benchmark for Imax’s pull with Chinese audiences on visual-effects-driven titles: that film generated RMB452 million ($66.8 million) in cumulative mainland China box office, with the Imax format alone contributing RMB137 million ($20.2 million), over 30% of the total.
Nolan’s massive popularity in China has been building over time, and he’s become “bigger than any movie star” in the country, according to Manwaring. “Nolan is so big in China, and his following is not just enormous but extremely sticky. These are fans that are lifelong… diehard,” he says. Nolan’s previous film, “Oppenheimer,” took in $9 million in China in its first five days and closed with close to $20 million for its run.
Nolan’s profile “was a small snowball and it has just been continuously getting bigger and bigger and bigger,” Manwaring says, tracing the arc from a “Memento” re-release through “Dark Knight,” “Dark Knight Rises” and “Oppenheimer.” He calls the phenomenon “the Nolan effect, or the snowball, if you will,” and says it “has just gotten so enormous” as illustrated by the performance of “Oppenheimer.”
Asked what gives him confidence “The Odyssey” can become a genuine event movie, he calls the “Christopher Nolan effect” the single biggest reason for Imax’s optimism. On the film itself, the exec says, “We’re talking about one of the greatest poems ever made and told through the greatest filmmaker’s lens ever made.”
On the format side, Manwaring says there are still no 70mm Imax locations anywhere in Asia, though the company is in “very serious discussion” to bring the format to the region. In the meantime, China’s six mainland GT theaters – extremely powerful laser-projector setups built during Imax’s earlier “institutional” era, when the company was still installing systems in science and tech museums rather than commercial cinemas – have become de facto pilgrimage sites. Manwaring says the phenomenon took off with last year’s animated blockbuster “Ne Zha 2,” when fans flew in from across the country specifically to watch it in a GT theater, comparing the effect to planning a trip around the 70-millimeter theater at the BFI in London. “It would be silly to say we’re not interested in building out more of those across the world,” he says.
“Chinese audiences tend to be much more technical, I would say, than even U.S. audiences,” Manwaring adds, noting that moviegoers there scrutinize screen specifications and laser projection systems far more closely than audiences elsewhere. “They just say, ‘OK, Imax big screen, that’s great.’ … I think the audience pays even more attention to that in China than they do in other parts of the world.”
Imax China’s first-half results showed declines in both revenue and profit, which Manwaring attributes to a softer-than-expected Lunar New Year slate and a dry stretch in April and May, particularly for local-language titles. “That’s the nature of our business. Sometimes it comes in cycles,” he says. He points to a stronger second half, with “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” and “The Odyssey” joined by local hit “Kung Fu Soccer” and Disney’s upcoming “Avengers: Doomsday.”
Manwaring says Imax’s differentiation from rival premium large-format brands increasingly rests on content rather than specs alone, citing Formula One races, concerts, esports championships and documentaries alongside the company’s “Filmed for Imax” program with local filmmakers, which began with 2020’s “The Eight Hundred.”
“We used to be in the sales side of the business, trying to talk about why it’s so great,” he says of the program’s early years. “Now I think every single Chinese filmmaker, if they are going and shooting a film that they feel deserves that Imax canvas, they aren’t thinking just about converting it or formatting it in post.” Asked whether a Chinese filmmaker might eventually shoot a film entirely on Imax film cameras, as Nolan did with “The Odyssey,” Manwaring says, “There is nothing more that I would love to do,” citing rising demand for film cameras among Hollywood directors beyond Nolan, though cost and logistics remain barriers for now.
On expansion, Imax China has a backlog of just under 200 sites and continues prioritizing higher-tier cities over the lower-tier, mall-driven growth that characterized its pre-pandemic strategy, alongside upgrading older systems to laser. “Growth is a priority, and we do see the network growing in China,” Manwaring says. He points to alternative content as a tool for expanding the company’s addressable audience, citing survey data from NBA Finals broadcasts: “80% of the audience for that event hasn’t even been to a movie theater in five years to watch a film,” he says, adding that when those same attendees are asked afterward whether they’d return to watch a movie, “90-something %” say yes.
“A lot of people in the across the world forgot how great it is to go sit in a really dark movie theater and be immersed into a story,” Manwaring says. “Sometimes, you got to use some alternative content events to bring them back.”