News Christopher Nolan IMAX The Odyssey

IMAX CEO reveals why there aren’t more 70mm cinemas, after The Odyssey increases demand

Can't they just... build more?!

Hebe Hancock
15th July 2026, 16:55
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The release of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has people travelling across countries just to watch it the way it was intended. Despite the demand, there are still only 41 cinemas in the world capable of projecting the film in IMAX 70mm.

Universal

So why hasn’t IMAX just built more? According to IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond, the answer is surprisingly simple: It isn’t practical.

The film is the first feature ever shot entirely on IMAX 1570 film cameras, a format Christopher Nolan has supported for years despite the technical challenges that come with it.

Nolan even worked alongside IMAX to improve the cameras, making them quiet enough to capture dialogue on set. Even so, each roll of film still needed replacing roughly every three minutes because of how quickly the enormous reels ran out.

Speaking to Variety, CEO Richard Gelfond admitted he’d love to have more IMAX 70mm locations, but explained the company is working with technology that’s decades old.

“We’re sold out in some theaters into the fifth week already, and the 2am shows, the 7am shows, so there’s certainly more demand.

“The problem is they haven’t made new Imax film projectors in about 50 years. So we retrofit them, we rebuild them, and part of our strategy is to see how far we could take it. But certainly, demand-driven, I’d like to see more.”

When asked why IMAX couldn’t just manufacture brand-new 1570 film projectors, he said the idea simply isn’t realistic.

“We build new projectors every day, but film projectors using this film, it’s not practical. So we’ve got to find them, and we’ve got to rebuild them, which is what we did for The Odyssey. But can all 2,000 of our theaters have the film projectors? No, there’s just not that many around. But I think we could continue to grow it.”

Universal

In other words, the issue isn’t that IMAX doesn’t want more 70mm screens. The original projectors stopped being manufactured decades ago, meaning the company now has to hunt down existing machines, restore them and keep them running instead of producing new ones from scratch.

Building an entirely new production line for a format used by only a handful of blockbuster releases would be an enormous investment, and films made specifically for IMAX 1570 are still incredibly rare.

As incredible as the format looks, Christopher Nolan is still the exception rather than the rule. Most cinemas simply can’t justify investing in specialist equipment for a format that only comes around every few years.

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Featured image credit: Universal