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Your home cinema set-up might not cut it for watching Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey

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IMAX cameras have got an upgrade

A photo of a TV on a wooden stand in a living room. On the screen is the IMAX Enhanced section of the Sony Pictures Core streaming service.
(Image credit: Future)

Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film, The Odyssey, will be the first feature film shot entirely with IMAX film cameras.

That’s according to IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond at the Cannes film festival, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

Of course, using IMAX cameras is nothing new for Nolan. He has shot his movies in IMAX ever since using the technology in The Dark Knight back in 2008, and has since popularised its mainstream use.

With his latest, the director will be using new IMAX film cameras for the entirety of the shoot in 1.43:1 instead of being limited by the big and loud previous models.

Gelfond says the newly developed 70mm film stock cameras are 30 per cent quieter and allow Nolan to watch rushes (the unedited footage shot during one day’s production) more easily.

But what does this mean for when we can watch it at home? We don’t exactly know how this will affect the presentation of its disc and streaming releases, but we have some guesses.

When it hits our smaller screens, of course, this will be a different beast compared to the IMAX cinemas Nolan filmed specifically for.

That means they will be left with two options. They can crop the top and bottom of the image to fit the screen, but the image will be cut off to an extent. The other choice is to leave it uncropped, but then the screen will include black bars vertically on either side.

So, no matter how good your home cinema set-up is, it will never look quite as the director intended it.

We might be seeing more movies using these new cameras, too. Although the new kit is reserved for Nolan, it will be available to rent for other filmmakers once shooting is complete on The Odyssey.

The retelling of the Greek epic will star a whole host of household names including Matt Damon, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson. It is set to be released in July 2026.

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Robyn Quick
Robyn Quick

Robyn Quick is a Staff Writer for What Hi Fi?. After graduating from Cardiff University with a postgraduate degree in magazine journalism, they have worked for a variety of film and culture publications. In their spare time, Robyn can be found playing board games too competitively, going on cinema trips and learning muay thai.

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