Christopher Nolan has done it again. He was one of the first Hollywood filmmakers to have scenes from his films expand on IMAX screens and now he’s finally answering the question anyone who saw The Dark Knight, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Dune: Part Two, Sinners, Oppenheimer, or dozens of other movies in IMAX has thought: “Why isn’t the whole movie like this?”
Well, because up until now, it was impossible. The cameras were too big and too loud to film an entire Hollywood movie like that. It was a privilege held for select action sequences, concert films, or nature documentaries without dialogue. But for his new film, The Odyssey, Nolan asked IMAX to make smaller, quieter cameras capable of capturing footage that would screen in that massive, signature 1.43:1 aspect ratio and the company did just that. So, Nolan has been filming The Odyssey entirely with IMAX film cameras, making it the first Hollywood blockbuster ever to do so.
“Chris called me up and said If you can figure out how to solve the problems, we will make [The Odyssey] 100 percent in IMAX. And that’s what we’re doing,” IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond said at the Cannes Film Festival this week. “He forced us to rethink that side of our business, our film recorders, our film cameras.”
The cameras are reportedly 30% quieter than the previous iterations and “substantially lighter,” according to the Hollywood Reporter. Nolan has all the cameras working on his film now, but when he’s done, other filmmakers can use them too.
Of course, it had to be Nolan. It was Nolan who changed the game with The Dark Knight when he decided to showcase select scenes by filming them with IMAX film cameras, making the footage bigger and clearer than the rest of the movie. In the years since Nolan himself, and several other filmmakers—including Michael Bay, Brad Bird, Denis Villeneuve, and Ryan Coogler—have done similar things with their films. You go to see a movie on a true IMAX screen, and while most of it is in a traditional aspect ratio, certain scenes change the ratio and the whole screen is filled, basically going from a rectangle to a giant square.
That’s different from most of the movies you see in IMAX these days. Those are shot with smaller, digital IMAX cameras which capture images that can be projected larger than a standard aspect ratio, but not that full 1:43:1. Here’s a, now slightly dated but still helpful, explainer released by Total Film when Oppenheimer hit theaters. Nolan’s film is being filmed entirely in the IMAX film format in the top left.
Coogler also recently released a video about film stocks and aspect ratios that he used filming Sinners, which was shot partially with IMAX film cameras. That’s also very helpful and you can check that out here.
So, yes, other films have been filmed entirely with IMAX film cameras before. But not a big Hollywood blockbuster.
What this means for the audience member is, if you don’t know already, time to do some research. Are there IMAX theaters by you that can show films in the 1:43:1 aspect ratio? If so, you are going to want to keep an eye out for when advanced tickets for The Odyssey go on sale next summer. We’re sure it’ll be great however or whenever you see it. But to see the whole thing in full 1:43:1 IMAX will literally be witnessing a new era of film history.
Starring Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson, and Charlize Theron, The Odyssey is set to open July 17, 2026.
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