In India, IMAX said the film delivered ₹14.6 crore in the weekend box office, meaning roughly a quarter of the country’s opening weekend came from a format that barely exists here yet.
The signs were visible in the advance booking. Ashish Saksena, COO – Cinemas at BookMyShow, told CNBC-TV18 the film had already sold 1.5 million tickets on the platform, calling it proof of “the deep engagement Indian audiences have with global cinema and the country’s growing importance in the worldwide theatrical ecosystem.”But the more telling story isn’t the number. It’s what Nolan did to get it.
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A premiere, a press conference, a podcast
Two weeks ago, Mumbai witnessed a Hollywood moment it rarely gets. Christopher Nolan, who seldom embarks on global promotional tours with stars Tom Holland and Matt Damon for an unusually extensive visit ahead of the release of The Odyssey.Nolan flew to Mumbai with lead stars Matt Damon and Tom Holland for a two-day promotional visit on July 10–11, 2026, headlined by a red-carpet premiere, the first time he’s ever brought a film to India to premiere it.
“I’ve never been anywhere in the world with an appreciation of what movies can be and what they should be for audiences, and to me, it seemed crazy that we wouldn’t be bringing our films here to premiere them,” the Oscar-winning director said at a Mumbai press conference.
The visit went beyond the usual junket circuit too: Damon and Holland sat down for a long-form conversation with Indian content creator Prakhar Gupta while in the city.
The stars have since left, but the buzz has only intensified. With Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey posting blockbuster box office numbers worldwide, the film has become more than a cinematic event—it has underscored India’s growing importance in Hollywood’s global marketing strategy.
It’s the sort of star-power spectacle that makes for great television. The more interesting question is why now.
The answer: a shrinking China market
The scale of the India push makes more sense against the backdrop of Hollywood’s collapsing position in China, long its most important growth market outside North America.
Hollywood studios once commanded 35%-40% of China’s box office, according to an Omdia/Informa analysis. By 2024, that share had fallen to 21%; by the first half of 2025, it had crashed to just 5.5%.
The decline has been building since Beijing capped Hollywood imports via quota in 2012 and tightened censorship from 2018, which accelerated sharply this year. According to CNBC, after the Trump administration escalated tariffs on Chinese imports in 2025, Beijing retaliated by restricting Hollywood film imports further, with studios now projecting near-zero China revenue on major releases.
A separate 2026 trade analysis found that by March 2026, the tariff regime had hardened Hollywood’s access to a Chinese theatrical release into “a near-impossibility”.
Tellingly, The Odyssey itself won’t reach Chinese IMAX screens until August 14, over a month after its worldwide debut and well behind South Korea (August 5), per IMAX’s own release schedule.
India’s infrastructure is catching up
The pivot toward India isn’t happening in a vacuum; the market’s exhibition infrastructure has been scaling up to meet it, even if slowly.
India’s box office crossed a record ₹13,400 crore this year, per PVR INOX’s Q3 FY26 earnings disclosures. IMAX operated 31 screens in India as of February 2025, with 14 more agreed and a target of 150 by 2029, modest next to China’s roughly 800 IMAX screens, but a clear signal of intent.
Indian multiplex chains are premiumising fast too. PVR INOX executives said in January 2026 that premium and recliner-format screens were running 35-40% occupancy against 28-30% for standard screens, prompting further investment into large-format expansion.
Audiences, meanwhile, are showing little price resistance. Premium IMAX tickets for The Odyssey touched ₹3,300 in Mumbai and Pune, among the highest movie ticket prices ever recorded in India, and shows are still sold out.Saksena reads that as a deliberate choice, not just demand overflow. “The exceptional demand for IMAX screenings is especially significant,” he said. “It shows that audiences are consciously opting to watch The Odyssey in the format Christopher Nolan intended, reinforcing the enduring appeal of premium, large-format cinema.” More than a release, he called it “a cultural event, demonstrating the unique power of the theatrical experience.”
What analysts make of it
Not everyone reads the numbers as a structural turning point. Karan Taurani, EVP for Media, Retail, Consumer Discretionary and Internet at Elara Capital, said the box office surge is real, but narrow in its impact.
The media analyst projected The Odyssey could collect “anywhere in the range of ₹160 to ₹180 crores net box office India,” calling it significant given that “earlier films of Christopher Nolan have reported a lower box office, including the likes of Oppenheimer.”
He attributed the jump to rising ticket prices and IMAX penetration over the past five years, layered on a straightforward supply crunch: “India has only about 35 to 40 IMAX films, which is less than 1% of penetration levels… this opening weekend was genuinely strong because of the demand supply mismatch in the scarcity of IMAX films in India,” a read that matches IMAX’s own India number of ₹14.6 crore from a sliver of the country’s screens.
Looking ahead, Taurani was more cautious than the box office numbers suggest. “Structurally, the problems persist,” he said. “One is on consistency of content and second on sustenance of this kind of content coming on a consistent basis, which can drive ATP [average ticket price].”
He pointed out that Hindi cinema, 50-55% of overall multiplex box office, “has not seen these kinds of ticket prices sustain,” since tentpole events like this are rare: “You have a Durandar once in a year, once in six months. But apart from that, other films don’t have the capacity to fetch these kinds of ticket prices.”
“The net overall impact for the multiplexes is obviously large on the overall scheme of things: on food, ticket prices, metrics,” the media analyst said, adding, “But it cannot be like the only game changer that one can have.”
So, is this a moment or a movement?
That’s the question the industry is sitting with. And the answer, going by what’s on the table, is: it depends on what shows up next.
IMAX, for its part, is betting on more than one big weekend. CEO Rich Gelfond called The Odyssey part of “a rarified group of instant classic blockbusters in IMAX history that fully leverage our platform,” adding, “as bullish as we are on its success, our experience tells us that even we don’t know how this movie will grow our brand and business.”
Asked whether India can expect a steady pipeline of IMAX-format Hollywood titles rather than a one-off, the company pointed to a slate through 2026-27 including Dune: Part Three, Tom Cruise’s Digger, The End of Oak Street, The Dog Stars, and two India-rooted titles, Ramayana – Part 1 and Varanasi.
Denzil Dias, VP & MD, India Theatrical at Warner Bros. Discovery, argues this isn’t a one-genre story built around a single tentpole. He points to Obsession, a modestly budgeted horror film with no marquee cast, which he says is approaching ₹100 crore in India and has become the second highest-grossing Hollywood horror release in the country’s history; Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, which earned ₹36 crore; and the music biopic Michael, which earned ₹81 crore and became India’s highest-grossing music biopic.
“What connects them is not genre or budget,” Dias said. “It is the quality of their craft and the commitment to giving Indian audiences something worth leaving the house for.”
According to Dias, Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures India together held close to 50% of Hollywood’s India box office in 2025, and the two studios have accounted for 60% of Hollywood’s India business in the first half of 2026, by his count. “We are not here to participate in the India market,” he said. “We are here to lead it.”
Taurani’s scepticism offers the necessary counterweight: a genre that’s never been more than 10% of box office, ticket prices that spike for a marquee weekend and settle back down, and a Hindi film industry that still decides when India’s multiplexes actually get busy.
Put the two views side by side, though, and a shape emerges: Hollywood isn’t stumbling into India by accident; it’s following the only large, still-open door left standing as China shuts a little further every quarter.
PVR INOX’s Gautam Dutta, CEO – Revenue and Operations, sees the same pattern from the exhibition side. Hollywood, he says, no longer draws Indian audiences on spectacle alone; it’s fuelling a steadier, more content-agnostic appetite that stretches well past the tentpoles.
Is Hollywood’s success in India limited to big-budget blockbusters?
Over the years, viewers have embraced a far more diverse slate of Hollywood releases, with strong storytelling, positive word-of-mouth and social media conversations increasingly driving theatrical footfalls. Recommendations, early audience reactions and online buzz now play as important a role as franchise value.
“While tentpole franchises continue to dominate attention, Indian audiences are no longer choosing Hollywood films based on scale alone,” Gautam Dutta said.
“The question is no longer whether a film belongs to a major franchise, but whether it offers a memorable theatrical experience.” When a film delivers on that promise, Indian audiences have repeatedly shown they are willing to turn up for it, regardless of whether it is part of an established cinematic universe.
The trend, Dutta believes, signals a more mature theatrical market; one where Hollywood’s appeal in India extends well beyond spectacle to quality storytelling across genres.
