Fans Cross Oceans to See Nolan's 'The Odyssey' in Its Rarest Format

Only 41 cinemas worldwide can screen the film in Imax 1570, the format Christopher Nolan built the movie around

Devoted moviegoers are traveling across continents this summer to watch Christopher Nolan's adaptation of "The Odyssey" the way the director intended: projected on Imax 1570 film, the highest-resolution format in existence.

Only 41 cinemas around the world are equipped to show the film in that format, according to the Guardian, prompting cinephiles to plan international trips built around a single screening — an echo, fans have noted, of the ocean-spanning journey at the center of Homer's original epic.

Nolan has long championed Imax 1570, named for its 70mm film stock and 15 perforations per frame. "The Odyssey" marks the first feature ever shot entirely on 1570 cameras, equipment the Guardian described as notoriously heavy, loud and in need of frequent reloading. During the shoot, the film stock had to be changed every three minutes.

To make the format usable for dialogue scenes, Nolan worked with Imax to develop a soundproofing enclosure — a "blimp" — for the camera, which weighs about 180 kilograms, allowing him to record sound on 1570 film for the first time in his career.

The scarcity of venues capable of projecting the format has turned a trip to see "The Odyssey" into something closer to a pilgrimage for serious fans of Nolan's work, who have built reputations for tracking down rare film formats for titles including "Oppenheimer" and "Dunkirk." With only a handful of theaters worldwide holding the necessary projection equipment, some viewers are booking flights specifically to catch a screening in the format Nolan designed the film to be seen in.

— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian.