Nate Spronk of South Dakota said he planned his summer road trip to Maine to include a stop in Grand Rapids, so he and his family could watch “The Odyssey” in IMAX.
“We stayed one extra day so we could hit the theater on our way back home,” he told The Grand Rapids Herald on Monday. “I’d usually watch it at home, but I don’t have a theater this nice in South Dakota, so I had to make a pit stop when we were here.”
Spronk is one of countless moviegoers who have flocked to Grand Rapids from across the country to catch screenings of “The Odyssey” in its native IMAX 70mm format. The movie is the first to be filmed entirely using IMAX 70mm cameras, which results in a massive high definition 59-by-79-foot picture.
Grand Rapids’ own Celebration Cinema North is among the 40 theaters in the world that are equipped to screen the film. It is the only such theater in Michigan, and one of only 25 in the United States.
The massive reel of film needed to show the movie costs $200,000 to produce and weighs about 600 pounds. If rolled out in a straight line, the film would stretch 11 miles, roughly the distance between the theater and the Grand Rapids airport.
Outside the IMAX theater, owner Emily Loeks invites moviegoers to place a pin on a map of the U.S. to indicate where they traveled from to see the movie. While the map includes only the continental U.S., audience members have pointed to each of the lower 48 states and even placed pins to suggest Alaska and Hawaii as well.
Loeks said she has also heard of attendees who hail from Canada, Mexico, Denmark and parts of South America.
Angela Soto and Etherea Renzi drove nearly two hours from Goshen, Ind. to see “The Odyssey” in Grand Rapids. The friends said they scoured the internet to find any available showtimes of the movie before they finally found an opening at 7:45 a.m. in Grand Rapids.
“When I go back home, I have to sleep because I work third shift,” Soto said. “I don’t care if I get sleep deprived. It was worth the trip.”
Loeks said her theater continues to hold sold out screenings of the movie in its IMAX format beginning as early as 7:45 a.m. and releasing past midnight each day. The screenings have been so popular that Loeks has even extended showings through Sept. 16.
Because of the surge in interest for the movie, theater staff are constantly monitoring screenings of “The Odyssey” for projector incidents that could damage the valuable film.
“A lot can go wrong very quickly,” Vice President of Technology Jesse Forquer said. “We do not leave this running by itself.”
At least one member of theater personnel is present throughout an entire two-hour-and-52-minute runtime of an IMAX screening of “The Odyssey,” meaning some staff members have already seen the movie upwards of 20 times. This leads the theater to acquire a significant amount of institutional knowledge around IMAX screenings.
“We might have one of the deepest benches of an individual team in the country,” Forquer said. “It’s something we’re really proud of.”
While the theater has yet to experience a breakdown, one showtime did experience a four-minute interruption during the second week of screenings to ensure it could proceed without damaging the film. Fourquer said that during one of her first times screening “The Odyssey,” a sound effect during a scene where a character is shot with a bow caused her to panic as she believed the sound had come from a projector malfunction.
“That’s how proactive and into this the projection team is,” Loeks said. “Any concern and we’re protecting this print. It’s not a cheap print. You only get the one. They’re really not wanting to strike extra prints.”
Christopher Nolan, director of “The Odyssey,” has taken a special interest in incorporating IMAX in his films and has left his mark on the Celebration North theater. The theater’s two IMAX projectors are nicknamed TARS and CASE, a nod to the robots featured in Nolan’s “Interstellar.”
Trainees also learn to operate IMAX film by screening the first six minutes of “Interstellar.”
The theater’s IMAX trays, which hold rolls of film and feed them into the projectors, are outfitted with a ring of orange plastic to extend the length of film it can accommodate. That addition was made in 2023 to prepare for Nolan’s three-hour “Oppenheimer.”
Loeks said that despite the significant undertaking required by her theater to show “The Odyssey,” she is happy to help provide moviegoers a unique experience.
“It is rare that any movie theater has a regional draw as opposed to a local draw,” Loeks said. “It’s really fun welcoming folks from all over.”
Write to jackson@grherald.com