Wall Street Reviewed The Screen Not The Film
The Wall Got Reviewed
Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' opened to $264.1 million worldwide the weekend of July 17, his best debut ever, split $124.5 million domestic and $139.6 million international across 73 territories on a reported $250 million budget. Critics gave it a 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, Certified Fresh, and audiences handed it the app's 'Verified Hot' badge, which is Silicon Valley's way of saying people liked it without committing to a real word. Then it did the thing blockbusters almost never do: it held. The second weekend is projected at $84.5 million domestic, roughly a 32 percent drop, the strongest sophomore hold of any Nolan release on record. Normally a franchise picture loses half its opening by week two and everyone pretends that was the plan. This one barely flinched. The reviews are for the movie, but the money is for the wall. 'The Odyssey' is the first film shot entirely on IMAX 70mm, and that distinction is doing more work in this story than Homer, Matt Damon, or three thousand years of a man who cannot get home.
Square Footage As Asset
The world's 41 true-70mm IMAX screens pulled in $51.8 million of the opening weekend, just 19.6 percent of the global total, averaging $153,000 a screen. Ordinary multiplexes did not come close. Rosenblatt read that spread and reiterated a Buy on IMAX Corporation with a $47 price target, citing 'The Odyssey' and the upcoming 'Dune: Part Three' as the two pillars behind a $1.4 billion full-year box office guidance. IMAX got the upgrade. Not Universal, not Nolan, not the man who spent the summer getting shirtless for a camera built to run at 15 perforations a frame. IMAX did, because the analyst note was never about a story, it was about throughput per square foot of premium screen. That reading only holds if exhibitors keep believing it, so expect another round of PLF (premium large format) construction, with 'Dune: Part Three' already locked into IMAX cameras before a full script greenlight. The same week, Warner Bros. Discovery sued Amazon over an HBO Max marketing executive it says was poached mid-contract, a reminder that this industry is currently pricing everything, screens and people both, as line items on someone else's balance sheet.
Homer sent a man across the wine-dark sea for ten years to get home. Hollywood took the same story and used it to get IMAX a stock upgrade. IMAX's $47 price target now stands or falls on Nolan's next camera, not on this one. 'Dune: Part Three' is the next screen due for a real estate appraisal disguised as a review. If the halo repeats without Nolan attached to hold the camera steady, the format is the asset. If it doesn't, IMAX was just borrowing his name for the quarter.