The Odyssey passes US$1.4 million in China pre-release sales, tracking ahead of Oppenheimer

The film reached the pre-release milestone two weeks before its mainland opening, compared with three days for Christopher Nolan’s previous release.

The Odyssey has passed US$1.4 million (RMB10 million) in combined preview screenings and advance ticket sales ahead of its mainland China release on 14 August, according to China News Service, citing data from Alibaba Pictures’ Lighthouse platform.

Separately, figures from Chinese ticketing platform Maoyan showed the film had generated US$645,000 (RMB4.63 million) from preview screenings as of 1 August.

The early ticketing performance puts The Odyssey ahead of Christopher Nolan’s previous film, Oppenheimer, in terms of when it reached the same pre-release milestone.

Lighthouse data showed that Oppenheimer passed US$1.4 million (RMB10 million) in combined preview screenings and advance ticket sales on 27 August 2023, three days before its mainland China release. Advance ticket sales later exceeded US$2.8 million (RMB20 million) on 29 August, the day before the film opened.

By comparison, The Odyssey reached the RMB10 million milestone on 31 July, 14 days before its scheduled mainland release.

The film will arrive in China almost four weeks after its 17 July international debut. Imported films in the market operate through a separate approval and scheduling process, meaning their release dates do not always align with those in North America and Europe.

The delayed opening is also being watched as a potential further driver of the film’s international box office, particularly given the scale of its IMAX rollout.

As the first feature shot entirely with IMAX film cameras, the format is central to The Odyssey’s theatrical strategy worldwide and has also featured prominently ahead of its Chinese release.

IMAX China chief executive Daniel Manwaring said: “I’m expecting a very large majority of our entire network, if not all of our network, that first week will be playing The Odyssey.”

The planned rollout across IMAX’s nearly 800-screen mainland network would give The Odyssey a slightly larger footprint than Nolan’s previous China release. Oppenheimer opened across 761 IMAX screens in mainland China in 2023.

The Odyssey will arrive in China following a strong global run, with its worldwide box office reaching an estimated US$911.4 million by 2 August after three weekends.

Oppenheimer ultimately grossed US$61.6 million in mainland China, making it the film’s second-largest international territory after the UK, which generated US$75.5 million. China accounted for approximately 9.5% of its US$645.7 million international total.

Global Times, a Chinese English-language newspaper published by the People’s Daily group, quoted film critic Liu Nandou as forecasting that The Odyssey could gross between US$41 million and US$110 million (RMB300 million to RMB800 million) during its mainland China run.

Liu offered a cautious assessment of the film’s ability to achieve broader mainstream appeal, stating, “Nolan’s films have a ceiling. The threshold for understanding The Odyssey is extremely high, and it doesn’t fit the broad popcorn audience.”

Other early indicators suggest strong audience interest ahead of release. China News Service reported on 25 July that preview screenings in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen sold out shortly after tickets went on sale, including screenings in IMAX and CINITY, a premium large-format cinema system developed in China. The agency also reported that the China National Film Museum’s two IMAX GT preview screenings also sold out quickly despite tickets costing RMB183 (about US$25).

Variety reported on 28 July that The Odyssey had passed 252,000 “want-to-see” registrations on Maoyan by 24 July, placing it ahead of every other forthcoming Hollywood release then tracked by the platform. Maoyan figures showed that the total had risen to 254,860 by 2 August.

The metric is widely used in China as an indicator of pre-release audience interest, although it does not directly predict box office results.

Chinese fans have long referred to Christopher Nolan as “Nolan God”. That interest also drew international attention on 31 July, when a wide-ranging interview by Chinese cultural commentator Zhong Shu offered international audiences a rare insight into how The Odyssey was being discussed ahead of its mainland release.

The release comes as China’s summer box office continues to recover. Xinhua reported that the market had surpassed approximately US$770 million (RMB5.5 billion) by 25 July, supported by a broader spread of successful domestic and imported releases.