The Odyssey Is Playing on 41 Perfect Screens — But None of Them Are in the Middle East

Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" is the first feature film ever shot entirely on IMAX cameras. But if you want to see it exactly the way he intended, you have exactly 41 theaters on the planet to choose from — and none of them are in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, or anywhere else in the Middle East.

That's not a boycott or a snub. It's a story about hardware, history, and just how hard it is to keep a decades-old projection format alive in 2026.

Why so few screens?

The format Nolan shot in isn't the "IMAX" most people know from their local multiplex. Standard IMAX today usually means a large digital screen with laser projection. What Nolan uses is true IMAX film: 15-perforation, 70mm film run horizontally through a projector, displayed on a genuinely massive 1.43:1 screen. It's a format that dates back to the 1970s, and building or maintaining a theater for it is expensive and rare.

To get ready for this release, IMAX spent over a year tracking down broken, abandoned, and forgotten 70mm film projectors around the world. Technicians rebuilt as many as possible in-house, salvaging parts wherever they could. The company also trained 60 new projectionists from scratch, since running one of these machines is a specialized skill that's nearly disappeared. Even with all that effort, some obsolete parts simply couldn't be sourced or manufactured again.

The result of a year of restoration work: a net gain of just 11 theaters worldwide compared to "Oppenheimer."

So why isn't the Middle East on the list?

This isn't a new gap. None of Nolan's previous IMAX film productions, including "Oppenheimer," "Dunkirk," and "Interstellar," ever had true 70mm engagements in the Gulf region either. The true 1.43:1 IMAX film auditoriums that exist today are mostly legacy installations built decades ago in major US and European markets. The Middle East's cinema boom happened later, and it happened almost entirely with digital projection technology, so the region never inherited the old film infrastructure that this release depends on.

Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Sharjah all have excellent large-format screens today, including IMAX Digital, Dolby Cinema, and 4DX. Audiences there will still get a strong presentation of "The Odyssey." It just won't be the specific grain-and-film experience that a small number of cities were built to deliver decades before this film was ever conceived.

The bigger picture

Nolan and cast members including Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway have spent weeks pushing the message that this film deserves to be seen on real IMAX film. That messaging, paired with a hard cap of 41 theaters, has created intense demand. Some IMAX 70mm screenings, including at the BFI IMAX in London, are already sold out for weeks.

Whether that scarcity is frustrating or part of the appeal depends on who you ask. Either way, "The Odyssey" has turned a projection format into its own piece of the conversation around the film, and the Middle East, for now, is watching from the sidelines of that particular experience.

---