India will miss out on Christopher Nolan's true 70 mm vision for The Odyssey
Ready to drop Rs 3,000 on a ticket? Here is why even India's IMAX screens will only show you a slice of director Christopher Nolan's towering vision for The Odyssey.
As audiences around the world prepare for actor Matt Damon’s homecoming voyage in director Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (2026), Indian fans are also ready to spend Rs 1,000-3,000 for the film in IMAX. The problem, however, is that India still cannot watch the Greek epic the way Nolan has designed it to be seen.
That gap begins with the format itself. Nolan’s preferred 1570 format, or 70mm film with 15 perforations per frame, is the first format in which an entire feature film such as The Odyssey has been shot. For viewers raised on reels, streaming and 4K screens, it is being pitched as the ‘vinyl record’ of cinema. But for Indian audiences paying a premium ticket price, the experience will still fall short, with a standard digital IMAX presentation leaving out a large part of the image.
There are only 41 cinemas in the world that can project the 1570 format, as reported by The Guardian. One of them is IMAX Melbourne in Australia, which had removed its film projector in 2015 before bringing it back two years later after Nolan urged IMAX cinemas globally to screen his 2017 film Dunkirk in 1570.
The format has become a draw in itself for cinephiles. While film-goers are travelling to Turkey, Singapore, Malaysia, Germany and Los Angeles to catch the film, IMAX Melbourne has also emerged as a destination because it is the only cinema in the Southern Hemisphere with a 1570 reel of The Odyssey, The Guardian report mentioned. That reel runs more than 17km, weighs 240kg and is, in the words of IMAX Melbourne technical manager Dan Drobik, ‘a precious commodity’. Indian viewers, by contrast, do not have a single IMAX 1570 theatre.
That means anyone watching The Odyssey on a standard Indian digital IMAX screen will not be seeing the full frame. The top and bottom of Nolan’s image are cut to fit the wider and shorter digital screen. As a result, Odysseus and his men’s sea voyage, the Trojan war sequences, and the battles with monsters and supernatural beings will not appear in their entirety. The sky, the scale and the towering visuals the director engineered these cameras to capture will all be reduced.
Nolan’s long-standing attachment to 1570 is rooted in image quality. The format is named for the 70mm film stock and the 15 perforations on each frame, and he has repeatedly championed it as the highest-resolution film format in use.
Shooting The Odyssey in it came with technical challenges: the cameras are heavy, loud and need frequent reloading, with film stock being changed every three minutes during the shoot. Nolan also worked with IMAX on a soundproof ‘blimp’ for the 180kg camera so that dialogue could be recorded on 1570 for the first time.
For viewers in India, the next best option is one of the country’s 34 functional IMAX screens. In Delhi, these include PVR Select City Walk, PVR Priya, PVR Vegas Mall, INOX Vishal Mall and INOX Paras. In Noida, the options are PVR Superplex Logix and PVR Superplex at Mall of India, while Gurugram has PVR Ambience Mall.
Mumbai has Miraj Cinemas in Wadala, PVR ICON Phoenix Palladium, INOX Sky City Mall, INOX R City Mall, EROS INOX, INOX Maison at Jio World Plaza and INOX Megaplex at Inorbit Mall. The wider Mumbai region also includes Cinepolis Nexus in Navi Mumbai and Cinepolis Lake Shore in Thane.
In Pune, the listed venues are INOX Phoenix Mall and Cinepolis Nexus Westend Mall. Bengaluru’s options include PVR VR Mall, PVR Vega City, PVR Nexus Mall, INOX Mantri Square, INOX Galleria Mall and Cinepolis Shantiniketan.
In the south, Chennai has PVR Palazzo and INOX Phoenix, Coimbatore has Broadway Cinemas, Kochi has Cinepolis Centre Square Mall, and Thiruvananthapuram has PVR Lulu.
In the east, Kolkata is represented by INOX South City Mall. Lucknow has INOX Megaplex at Phoenix Mall, while Gujarat’s listed venues are PVR Palladium Mall in Ahmedabad and Rajhans Precia in Surat.
So while The Odyssey may still pull Indian audiences into IMAX theatres, the full 1570 presentation Nolan has built the film around will remain unavailable in the country. In an era of 15-second reels, endless scrolling and constant streaming releases, a film that exists on a 17-kilometre reel continues to command attention, but in India it will still be seen in a reduced digital IMAX form rather than in the format Nolan wants.
The Odyssey is based on Homer's ancient Greek poem and also features actors Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal, Benny Safdie, John Leguizamo, Elliot Page, Himesh Patel, Bill Irwin, Samantha Morton, Jesse Garcia, Will Yun Lee, Rafi Gavron, Shiloh Fernandez and Mia Goth in key roles.
The upcoming film, co-produced by Noland and Emma Thomas, is set for a worldwide theatrical release on July 17.
As audiences around the world prepare for actor Matt Damon’s homecoming voyage in director Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (2026), Indian fans are also ready to spend Rs 1,000-3,000 for the film in IMAX. The problem, however, is that India still cannot watch the Greek epic the way Nolan has designed it to be seen.
That gap begins with the format itself. Nolan’s preferred 1570 format, or 70mm film with 15 perforations per frame, is the first format in which an entire feature film such as The Odyssey has been shot. For viewers raised on reels, streaming and 4K screens, it is being pitched as the ‘vinyl record’ of cinema. But for Indian audiences paying a premium ticket price, the experience will still fall short, with a standard digital IMAX presentation leaving out a large part of the image.
There are only 41 cinemas in the world that can project the 1570 format, as reported by The Guardian. One of them is IMAX Melbourne in Australia, which had removed its film projector in 2015 before bringing it back two years later after Nolan urged IMAX cinemas globally to screen his 2017 film Dunkirk in 1570.
The format has become a draw in itself for cinephiles. While film-goers are travelling to Turkey, Singapore, Malaysia, Germany and Los Angeles to catch the film, IMAX Melbourne has also emerged as a destination because it is the only cinema in the Southern Hemisphere with a 1570 reel of The Odyssey, The Guardian report mentioned. That reel runs more than 17km, weighs 240kg and is, in the words of IMAX Melbourne technical manager Dan Drobik, ‘a precious commodity’. Indian viewers, by contrast, do not have a single IMAX 1570 theatre.
That means anyone watching The Odyssey on a standard Indian digital IMAX screen will not be seeing the full frame. The top and bottom of Nolan’s image are cut to fit the wider and shorter digital screen. As a result, Odysseus and his men’s sea voyage, the Trojan war sequences, and the battles with monsters and supernatural beings will not appear in their entirety. The sky, the scale and the towering visuals the director engineered these cameras to capture will all be reduced.
Nolan’s long-standing attachment to 1570 is rooted in image quality. The format is named for the 70mm film stock and the 15 perforations on each frame, and he has repeatedly championed it as the highest-resolution film format in use.
Shooting The Odyssey in it came with technical challenges: the cameras are heavy, loud and need frequent reloading, with film stock being changed every three minutes during the shoot. Nolan also worked with IMAX on a soundproof ‘blimp’ for the 180kg camera so that dialogue could be recorded on 1570 for the first time.
For viewers in India, the next best option is one of the country’s 34 functional IMAX screens. In Delhi, these include PVR Select City Walk, PVR Priya, PVR Vegas Mall, INOX Vishal Mall and INOX Paras. In Noida, the options are PVR Superplex Logix and PVR Superplex at Mall of India, while Gurugram has PVR Ambience Mall.
Mumbai has Miraj Cinemas in Wadala, PVR ICON Phoenix Palladium, INOX Sky City Mall, INOX R City Mall, EROS INOX, INOX Maison at Jio World Plaza and INOX Megaplex at Inorbit Mall. The wider Mumbai region also includes Cinepolis Nexus in Navi Mumbai and Cinepolis Lake Shore in Thane.
In Pune, the listed venues are INOX Phoenix Mall and Cinepolis Nexus Westend Mall. Bengaluru’s options include PVR VR Mall, PVR Vega City, PVR Nexus Mall, INOX Mantri Square, INOX Galleria Mall and Cinepolis Shantiniketan.
In the south, Chennai has PVR Palazzo and INOX Phoenix, Coimbatore has Broadway Cinemas, Kochi has Cinepolis Centre Square Mall, and Thiruvananthapuram has PVR Lulu.
In the east, Kolkata is represented by INOX South City Mall. Lucknow has INOX Megaplex at Phoenix Mall, while Gujarat’s listed venues are PVR Palladium Mall in Ahmedabad and Rajhans Precia in Surat.
So while The Odyssey may still pull Indian audiences into IMAX theatres, the full 1570 presentation Nolan has built the film around will remain unavailable in the country. In an era of 15-second reels, endless scrolling and constant streaming releases, a film that exists on a 17-kilometre reel continues to command attention, but in India it will still be seen in a reduced digital IMAX form rather than in the format Nolan wants.
The Odyssey is based on Homer's ancient Greek poem and also features actors Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal, Benny Safdie, John Leguizamo, Elliot Page, Himesh Patel, Bill Irwin, Samantha Morton, Jesse Garcia, Will Yun Lee, Rafi Gavron, Shiloh Fernandez and Mia Goth in key roles.
The upcoming film, co-produced by Noland and Emma Thomas, is set for a worldwide theatrical release on July 17.
