Devon Schumbeno and Anika Samayoa took paid time off work, boarded a Brightline train in Orlando, and rode it more than three hours south for one reason: to watch Christopher Nolan's “The Odyssey” on the only 70mm IMAX screen in Florida. They are not alone. Since the film opened on July 17, the AutoNation IMAX 3D Theater at the Museum of Discovery and Science in downtown Fort Lauderdale has sold more than 55,500 tickets, according to the museum.
The pull is simple: this is the only theater in Florida offering true 15/70mm IMAX film projection, and one of just 25 active 70mm IMAX theaters left in the United States, as reported by the Miami Herald. Worldwide, there are only about 40 theaters equipped to show film in this format. Nolan shot “The Odyssey,” his adaptation of Homer's ancient Greek epic, entirely on IMAX film cameras rather than converting digital footage, and IMAX developed a new camera specifically to capture it, a scale of production that helps explain why the format remains so scarce.
“We took an odyssey to come down and see 'The Odyssey,'” Schumbeno, 24, said of the trip he and Samayoa, 25, spent months planning before finally making the Brightline run from Orlando. David Neal made his own trip from Orlando, arriving in Fort Lauderdale last Friday morning ahead of a sold-out afternoon screening. “When you want to see a really big film like this, this is where you come,” Neal said.
A Format Nobody Else Can Show
The technical gap between 70mm IMAX and a standard digital screening is enormous. Standard digital film captures images at 4K resolution, while 70mm film captures images at 18K, and true 15/70mm projection expands the picture to a taller 1.43:1 aspect ratio that displays up to 40% more image than the cropped 1.90:1 format used in most digital cinemas, according to Wanderu. Universal Pictures produced roughly 30 physical 70mm prints of the film worldwide, each nearly 11 miles long and weighing more than 600 pounds, requiring specialized teams just to load and run the massive twin platters, per the Los Angeles Times.
That kind of physical projection depends on a shrinking pool of specialists. New 70mm IMAX projectors have not been manufactured in about 50 years, and replacement parts are no longer available, per Variety. Nationally, the number of motion picture projectionists fell 76% over a decade before edging back up to 2,610 in 2023, reflecting how rare the mechanical know-how has become since most multiplexes switched to fully automated digital systems in the 2000s and 2010s. At the AutoNation IMAX, museum specialists maintain and operate the 70mm projector themselves, keeping one of the country's few working machines running through a packed schedule.
Sold-Out Shows and a Trip Down the Rails
The AutoNation IMAX screen measures 65 feet tall and 85 feet wide, with unassigned seating and an option to pay extra for priority spots. Early ticket sales during the film's first week alone reached 35,822 seats, the equivalent of 136 consecutive sold-out shows, according to WLRN. The theater's current total of 55,500 tickets sold puts it within reach of the venue's all-time record of 57,200 tickets, set by “Avatar” in 2009.
Brightline's direct rail service between Orlando International Airport and Fort Lauderdale, running 16 round trips a day on a roughly 3.5-hour ride since launching in September 2023, has made the trip realistic for Central Florida fans without a car. The station's report on regional transit ties directly into why so many Orlando-area moviegoers are choosing the train over driving. Museum of Discovery and Science CEO Joseph Cox said he has personally met moviegoers from Atlanta, Chile, and the Bahamas coming through the doors for the film, adding that the atmosphere inside the theater has taken on a life of its own. “It's almost like going to a concert,” Cox said.
An Old Theater's Second Life
The AutoNation IMAX Theater first opened in November 1992 as the Blockbuster IMAX Theater, part of a $33 million capital project in downtown Fort Lauderdale, before being renamed in 2007 following a gift from Fort Lauderdale-based AutoNation, according to the Museum of Discovery and Science. The nonprofit museum, which is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums and draws more than 450,000 visitors a year to its 150,000-square-foot facility, has hosted this kind of surge before: the same theater sold out its 70mm run of Nolan's “Oppenheimer” during its July 2023 release.
The demand isn't limited to Fort Lauderdale. “The Odyssey” has broken box-office records, pulling in $140 million from IMAX screens alone in its first two weeks, about 21.9% of its total worldwide gross. Museum leaders have extended the film's run at the AutoNation IMAX until September 16 to meet continued demand, and an online petition pushing for an extended run has drawn more than 1,400 signers. Meanwhile, an IMAX theater projector in Orlando has reportedly sat broken for years, leaving Central Florida fans like Neal, Schumbeno, and Samayoa with no closer option than the trip south.
The frenzy in Fort Lauderdale mirrors what's played out elsewhere this summer, including a Glendale theater's extended 70mm run and a similar pilgrimage to Michigan's only true film venue for the movie. For now, the Museum of Discovery and Science's aging projector remains one of the few machines anywhere still capable of showing Nolan's film exactly as he shot it.
