Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey made movie history as the first narrative feature to be shot entirely with IMAX cameras, and it’s all thanks to a kid and a David Bowie song. The film’s cinematographer, Hoyte Van Hoytema, revealed to Empire that he shot IMAX test footage of a child reading the lyrics to Bowie’s “Sound and Vision” to prove whether IMAX film cameras were advanced enough to record dialogue.
“I showed Chris a very large close-up of a child on an IMAX screen reciting David Bowie’s ‘Sound and Vision’ from a piece of paper,” Van Hoytema said. “It was very moving. The level of intimacy in both the visuals and the sound came together in the theater.”
Director Nolan said the result was “shocking”, adding: “I never would have been able to take a shot like that before.” This footage conclusively proved that director Nolan was finally able to shoot the entire movie entirely in IMAX cameras. On the other hand, Imax cameras were too noisy to film dialogue scenes close to the actors, so Nolan was previously limited to mostly action scenes. A new Imax film case called “Blimp” was created to significantly reduce the noise produced by Imax cameras.
“The airship system is a game changer,” Nolan said. “You can shoot your feet in the face (whispering) and get a usable sound. What that opens up is an intimate performance moment in the most beautiful format in the world.”
Nolan has been working toward making films entirely using IMAX cameras since 2008, when The Dark Knight became the first Hollywood movie to use IMAX cameras to shoot some action scenes. Since then, Nolan has used Imax cameras in more scenes with each new release. His 2023 Oscar-winning Oppenheimer was the first film to use Imax black-and-white 65mm film.
“The Odyssey” will be shot by Van Hoytema, who worked with director Nolan on “Interstellar,” “Dunkirk,” “Tenet,” and “Oppenheimer.” He won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography for the latter film, and spoke to Variety at the time about working with Nolan and Kodak to create the first stock for Imax 65mm black-and-white film.
“65mm black and white film doesn’t exist, so our first challenge was to talk to Kodak to see if they could provide us with the film stock we needed for this film,” Van Hoytema said. “We also had to redesign the cameras because these cameras have a metal pressure plate behind the film gate, and that backing is much thinner than the color stock. Light flows back onto the film and creates all these artifacts.”
Nolan previously told Empire magazine that he shot “over 2 million feet of film” during the 91-day production of “The Odyssey” earlier this year. Kodak says 65mm film costs $1.50 a foot. This means that Nolan’s films used approximately $3 million worth of film.
Matt Damon will be reuniting with director Nolan after “Interstellar” and “Oppenheimer,” and will be headlining the film as Odysseus, the main character in “The Odyssey.” Tom Holland plays his son Telemachus. This vast ensemble also includes Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, and Jon Bernthal.
“As a filmmaker, you’re looking for gaps in film culture, things that haven’t been done before,” Nolan told Empire of why he chose to adapt Homer’s Greek epic. “And what I saw was that all of the great mythological films that I grew up watching, like the Ray Harryhausen movies, I had never seen them done with the weight and authenticity that you could get in a low-budget, big-budget Hollywood IMAX production.”
“Odyssey” will be released in theaters by Universal on July 17, 2026.
