After Selling Nolan's 'The Odyssey' Tickets a Year In Advance, Can IMAX Do The Same For 'Ramayana' or SS Rajamouli's Next?

In a cinematic coup that surprised everyone, the pre-sales for Christopher Nolan's highly anticipated film, The Odyssey, opened a staggering year in advance in select IMAX screens across the US. The unprecedented move was executed not only a full year before the July 2026 release of the film, but also without a single official visual unit available on the internet (the debut teaser is playing in cinemas, but leaked online). Could India, with its inherent appetite for blockbuster cinema, replicate this feat?

At the eighth edition of the Big Cine Expo, The Hollywood Reporter India asked Preetham Daniel, Vice President - Theatre Development - India, APAC, Australia & New Zealand, whether the country can expect to see a similar pre-sales strategy with IMAX, which reportedly contributed over 20 percent of F1: The Movie's global box office on just one percent of screens.

"Of course, it can be replicated in India. Why can't a movie like Baahubali or the next SS Rajamouli film be on the same lines as The Odyssey?" said Daniel, noting that the larger question would then be how one "packages" a film like that, which would be ambitious enough to open booking more than 300 days ahead.

With a movie like The Odyssey, there is a big name attached in the form of Nolan, followed by the use of tech (it is the first blockbuster entirely shot with 70 mm IMAX film cameras), and then there's the story, Daniel explains.

"As long as we have all these three elements within the film, it's possible. So a movie mounted on the scale of a Baahubali can do that. Or Ramayana, for example, which is the first Indian film to be filmed for IMAX. It'll be a great movie to resonate with the Indian audience. So can it be done? Absolutely."

Ramayana, the two-part epic scheduled to release globally on Diwali 2026 and 2027, starring Ranbir Kapoor, Yash and Sai Pallavi, had its grand teaser launch at IMAX in Mumbai last month, setting the stage for a visual spectacle integrated with the brand. However, Daniel is also realistic.

IMAX is currently at just 35 screens in the country—including in tier-two markets like Surat, Lucknow and Coimbatore—with projections to be around 100 to 150 screens eventually. For the pre-sales numbers to explode and drive conversations, one would also need a huge volume of screens to do it. In the US, The Odyssey sold tickets worth $1.5 million, with 95 per cent of the seats filling up within an hour.

"Now, while we may not do it, because we have only 35 screens in India. So the domestic market for us is much smaller compared to the US, where we might have 400 screens, or in China, with 800 screens. So when you have scale, that success rate screams out. If you do it on a smaller scale, like 35 screens, you might not see that as compelling as other markets."

According to The Hollywood Reporter, once the tickets went live for The Odyssey, they were being resold for a whopping ₹26,000-₹34,000 over the average ticket price of around ₹2,200. The film is Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic and is headlined by Matt Damon, starring as Odysseus, with Tom Holland playing his son Telemachus.