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# The biggest screen I could find
- URL: https://davidnunez.com/the-biggest-screen-i-could-find/
- Published: 2026-08-20T20:43:54.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-20T20:43:54.000Z
- Description: Twenty-five theaters in America can show The Odyssey the way it was made. None of them are in Massachusetts. I found that out after I bought the ticket.
- Author: David Nuñez
- Tags: broadcast

A year ago I wrote a piece about how movie [streaming services like Netflix broke our shared fire](https://davidnunez.com/hearthless-how-streaming-stole-our-shared-fires/), and I ended it with advice. “Visit the temple… Movie theaters still hold the largest bonfires.” 

So, last Friday evening L and I saw [The Odyssey](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33764258/?ref=davidnunez.com), and the film delivered a raging fire.

A month ago, in this newsletter, I said I would go watch Matt Damon get tied to the mast on [the biggest screen I could find](https://davidnunez.com/work-harder-not-smarter/), in a hunt for the real among the unreal.

I got the real. I did not get the screen.

The deception and cruel punishment the gods had in store for that evening were only beginning.

### A Nobody’s three-hour odyssey.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/08/image-2.png)

By Sailko - Own work, CC BY 3.0 via [WikiMedia](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75062502&ref=davidnunez.com)

In Homer's original version, Odysseus beats the [Polyphemus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphemus?ref=davidnunez.com) (aka the Cyclops) by telling it his name is Nobody, so that when the blinded giant screams for help he roars that Nobody has hurt him. Nolan [cut that](https://www.slashfilm.com/2218098/christopher-nolan-the-odyssey-cyclops-showdown-changes-explained/?ref=davidnunez.com): “It’s a pun. Puns in translation are tough. I tried. It was not possible to work it in.”

What Nolan kept instead of the pun was the scream. Audiences have been walking out of this film with [ringing ears and headaches](https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/odyssey-too-loud-film-fans-164402418.html?ref=davidnunez.com), some cinemas have started handing out earplugs, and sound designer Richard King has explained the house philosophy: “Like punk rock music, it’s a full body experience, and dialogue is only one facet of the sonic palette.” 

My Apple Watch spent the evening issuing loud-environment sirens. Had I been in Odysseus’s actual crew it would presumably have vibrated for ten years. 

I spent three hours running my own small odyssey through the building it was playing in. Navigating the concessions stand beforehand was like the return to Ithaca, in that it took far longer than anyone had budgeted, the theater had made some inexplicably dumb decisions, and several people did not make it. I was angry all night at the Boston Common AMC theater management and desired vengeance. In Greek mythology, there is *always* a piece of reckoning, after all. Or at least, gratuitous suffering.

Suffering, I truly endured. In the theater, the man sitting to my right gorged on a sticky, drippy, and foul-smelling meal of what I could only assume were pig entrails covered in BBQ sauce. He chose to dine during *that* [Circe scene](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/movies/the-odyssey-circe.html?ref=davidnunez.com), (if you know, you know). The evening turned out to be a fully immersive experience.

The man to L’s left was filming the screen, without shame, on some kind of device clearly designed for professional movie piracy. It had a cup holder clamp. The pirate copy may not even have been worth making. The claim that ninety percent of pirated films are recorded in theaters gets repeated everywhere, and when TorrentFreak went looking for a source, [the MPA had no recent data](https://torrentfreak.com/90-of-all-pirated-films-are-recorded-in-movie-theaters-231223/?ref=davidnunez.com) and camcorded copies turned out to be rare on pirate sites now. He may have been committing a crime that stopped mattering. Regardless, on a hectic Friday night, nobody was going to notice or do anything about some other Nobody, adjusting his camera in the dark cinema.

In [“Hearthless”](https://davidnunez.com/hearthless-how-streaming-stole-our-shared-fires/) I wrote that you cannot pause a movie theater and you cannot rewind it. A stranger sat down beside my partner and started manufacturing a copy that could be paused, rewound, and stolen out of the building in his pocket like [Prometheus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus?ref=davidnunez.com) and the fire, if Prometheus had a cup holder clamp.

Homer’s pun about getting away with something anonymously was not thundering off the screen that night. It was the Nobody eating his dinner next to me. It was the Nobody sitting next to us with his tiny eye filming the screen. 

Odysseus does not lose his crew to monsters. He loses them because they eat something they were warned not to eat while he is asleep, and not one of them makes it home as a result. Homer knows this type. Penelope’s suitors ate Odysseus’s herds in his own hall for years, in daylight, in front of the staff, because they had decided he was not coming home and there would be no comeuppance. Shamelessness is a conclusion about enforcement.

No comeuppance to be found anywhere along this voyage, despite plenty of warnings.

I had drawn the seat in the strait. The man to my right was [Scylla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scylla?ref=davidnunez.com), taking six at a time. The man to L’s left was [Charybdis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charybdis?ref=davidnunez.com), swallowing the whole thing. A hazard on either side, no version of the passage where you get through untouched, and Circe’s advice in that situation is to accept what the nearer monster takes and keep rowing. In fairness, I let the film take me anyway, and happily forgave everyone in that room except the people who run it. 

### A brighter fire sold to fewer people.

Through the end of July, American theaters had sold [470.9 million tickets](https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-box-office-is-booming-fewer-people-are-going-movies-2026-08-05/?ref=davidnunez.com) in 2026 against 747.3 million across the same thirty weeks of 2019\. That's thirty-seven percent fewer tickets. Revenue is [up 19.1 percent against last year](https://variety.com/2026/film/box-office/movie-theaters-rebound-box-office-obsession-project-hail-mary-1236810214/?ref=davidnunez.com), because the average adult ticket now runs $13.46 and a premium-format seat averages $18.22\. [Spider-Man: Brand New Day](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22084616/?ref=davidnunez.com) (on IMAX screens, as well) has set the record for opening weekend ticket sales in the US at $360 million and crossed *$2 Billion(!) globally* in just three weeks. In *this* economy! Which is the point rather than the exception. Every record still being broken is a dollars record.

Fewer people, paying more, in better chairs. The industry calls this a recovery and it is not obvious they are wrong. Premium large format was [15.6 percent of the North American box office](https://www.screendaily.com/features/how-the-premium-large-format-gold-rush-is-pitting-exhibitors-against-imax/5210046.article?ref=davidnunez.com) in 2024, and IMAX has pushed its share of opening weekends from a historical ceiling of ten percent to a new floor of fifteen. It forecasts a record [$1.4 billion](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/09/imax-theater-stocks-2025.html?ref=davidnunez.com) globally this year. Exhibitors have noticed, and several are [building their own large formats](https://www.screendaily.com/features/how-the-premium-large-format-gold-rush-is-pitting-exhibitors-against-imax/5210046.article?ref=davidnunez.com) rather than licensing the name. 

So the strategy is explicit. Sell the spectacle you cannot get at home, and charge accordingly. Which raises the question of what exactly is being sold.

### The concession stand and the dining hall.

![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/gps-cs-s/AHRPTWmrqcXqZ22zjJv_sw0P9EAY_WiZPSJisyn3-yvEHXkGnO7YZ0luQj4jYOg8HHARC35MvKM3lLMAgLrOnvgN4ZhcDhrTWtMsONihNm72rNEuL_fuZMvDEB6-J9EPiGMS_IzWwkr0=w1392-h1044-k-no)

  
Popcorn carries something like an [85 percent gross margin](https://thehustle.co/why-is-movie-theater-popcorn-so-outrageously-expensive?ref=davidnunez.com). Concessions are roughly thirty percent of a chain’s revenue and [between 45 and 50 percent of its gross profit](https://www.chowhound.com/1804255/movie-theater-snacks-make-more-than-tickets/?ref=davidnunez.com), and unlike ticket money, it is not shared with the studio. Stanford has [an entire teaching case](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-does-movie-popcorn-cost-so-much?ref=davidnunez.com) on why the popcorn costs what it costs. After overhead, the average theater still nets around four percent.

AMC’s [$1.5 billion “Go Plan”](https://investor.amctheatres.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/425/amc-theatres-expands-feature-fare-menu-nationwide-with-new-craveable-favorites-including-street-corn-poppers-hot-honey-sausage-pizza-and-popcorn-chicken?ref=davidnunez.com) names food as one of its five pillars, and Feature Fare now runs in more than four hundred locations, this year adding street corn poppers, popcorn chicken, and hot honey sausage pizza. Many sites do [full dine-in service](https://naconline.org/2026/05/amc-expands-feature-fare-menu-nationwide/?ref=davidnunez.com) with burgers and a bar.

This makes me feel differently about the man with the takeout. The building would prefer he dined inside the theater, and it is spending a billion and a half dollars to make that happen. He was the target market.

I ordered a fountain soda and a bag of M&M’s from a touchscreen, then walked to a different floor to collect them, where I joined a horde of a couple hundred people who had done the same thing. A more or less true-to-life staging of [Book XI](https://www.theoi.com/Text/HomerOdyssey11.html?ref=davidnunez.com). Only one employee was assembling every order in the building, the full meals included. People gave up and left. The soda and the M&M’s came to fifteen dollars. 

[Ordering ahead](https://www.amctheatres.com/food-and-drink/order-ahead?ref=davidnunez.com) bought me a different line, upstairs, for an empty cup.

I know what this looked like when it was an idea instead of a line item. In 1997 Tim and Karrie League opened the first [Alamo Drafthouse](https://drafthouse.com/about/history?ref=davidnunez.com) at 409 Colorado Street in Austin, in a warehouse-district building with a roofline shaped like the Alamo, after their first attempt at running a theater in Bakersfield had failed. It played second-run titles at discount prices and brought food to your seat, and I remember it as new rather than as an upsell. The people who built it were in it for the movies, and you could tell. The Drafthouse was the [Austin Weird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep%5FAustin%5FWeird?ref=davidnunez.com) us originals lament as [no longer there](https://davidnunez.com/austin-tx-progress-and-nostalgia/).

I have fond memories of the “real” Alamo Drafthouse. It notoriously gives you [one warning for talking or texting and then ejects you without a refund](https://www.kut.org/life-arts/2011-06-09/alamo-drafthouse-founder-responds-to-dont-text-viral-video?ref=davidnunez.com). In 2011 they took the profanity-soaked voicemail a customer left after being thrown out and cut it into [a PSA](https://www.firstshowing.net/2011/alamo-drafthouses-no-texting-psa-made-from-an-actual-voicemail/?ref=davidnunez.com) that played before their films. She complained that she was free to text in all the other theaters in the “Magnited States of America.” [Anderson Cooper said League deserved a Nobel](https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2011/06/09/newsmakers-anderson-cooper-says-tim/6690684007/?ref=davidnunez.com). 

The modern movie chains copied the food and left the rules behind. AMC is spending [about $600 million](https://variety.com/2014/film/news/amc-boost-sales-fully-reclining-seats-theaters-1201258882/?ref=davidnunez.com) on recliners, and a recliner conversion pulls [between half and two thirds of the seats](https://screencrush.com/amc-theaters-reclining-seats/?ref=davidnunez.com) out of the room. More space for your fast-food meals, I guess.

Alamo is a studio asset now. [Sony bought it in June 2024](https://variety.com/2024/film/news/sony-pictures-buys-alamo-drafthouse-cinemas-1236035292/?ref=davidnunez.com)for $200 million and filed it under a division called Sony Pictures Experiences.

The theater that threw people out for touching a phone now [asks you to take it out](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/24/movies/alamo-drafthouse-mobile-ordering.html?ref=davidnunez.com) to order dinner.

### Theater etiquette has been dying since 1912.

![](https://cdn8.openculture.com/2019/06/27214648/MovieBehavior2.jpg)

Listen. I get it. I’m an old man who doesn’t like change. So before I got too bent out of shape about the decline of the modern audience, I checked whether there had been an incline. Or, as they say, “[a more civilized age.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQA5aLctA0I&ref=davidnunez.com)”

There had not.

Silent-era cinemas [taught behavior on title cards](https://www.openculture.com/2019/06/how-cinemas-taught-early-movie-goers-the-rules-etiquette-for-watching-films-1912.html?ref=davidnunez.com) before the show. “Ladies, kindly remove your hats.” “Loud talking or whistling not allowed.” “Please applaud with hands only.” The period complaint was that women chatted and wore [enormous hats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema%5Fetiquette?ref=davidnunez.com), and that the cinema mixed classes and sexes more freely than was thought wise. (Maybe Circe had a point?)

Debrett’s published a [cinema etiquette guide](https://debretts.com/etiquette-at-the-cinema/?ref=davidnunez.com) in 2008 after finding that sixty-six percent of moviegoers wanted behavior to improve. A recent [YouGov survey](https://today.yougov.com/entertainment/articles/50978-americans-rules-for-movie-theater-etiquette?ref=davidnunez.com) finds Americans in near-total agreement that talking and spoilers are unacceptable and split on texting. Time Out has asked, in print, whether [etiquette is the worst it has ever been](https://www.timeout.com/news/is-movie-theater-etiquette-the-worst-its-ever-been-033125?ref=davidnunez.com), which is a question the trade press has been running since roughly the invention of the trade press.

The room was always a negotiation, and in 1912 the venue took responsibility for the terms of that negotiation and printed them on the screen. Outside of a converted parking garage in Austin, almost no one does that now. 

What plays before the film instead is [Nicole Kidman](https://deadline.com/2023/11/nicole-kidman-amc-theatres-ad-touched-surprise-nerve-in-culture-keith-urban-says-1235637837/?ref=davidnunez.com) telling you that “heartbreak feels good in a place like this.” (Heartbreak or heartburn?) She shot it in 2021 to bring audiences back after the shutdown, [for free](https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/called-favors-nicole-kidman-reveals-140000315.html?ref=davidnunez.com), calling in favors, meaning to help. Five years later it is still running, and this month the White House [made a version of it](https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2026/08/04/white-house-rips-nicole-kidman-amc-ad-we-come-to-this-place-for-maga/?ref=davidnunez.com) about something else entirely.

The rules used to be a request. Now they are a poem about magic.

So the audience is acquitted.

### The film was not cheating.

I sat there half-admiring the practical effects and half-assuming I was being played, because I have written that assumption down before. In [“Every Fake You See Is for Real”](https://davidnunez.com/every-fake-you-see-is-for-real/) I argued that a director promising “no CGI” is usually promising “CGI good enough that you didn’t notice,” and I stand by it in general. One of the debunking videos I linked in that issue takes apart Nolan’s Oppenheimer.

The Odyssey is the exception.

It is the [first feature shot entirely on IMAX film](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FOdyssey%5F%282026%5Ffilm%29?ref=davidnunez.com), which required inventing a camera to do, the [IMAX Keighley](https://www.cined.com/how-christopher-nolan-shot-the-odyssey-entirely-on-imax-film-inside-the-new-keighley-camera/?ref=davidnunez.com), built as a working 15/70 rig rather than a prestige gesture to appease movie snobs and gain marketing clout. Over two million feet of negative ​ran through that single enormous eye. Hoyte van Hoytema had [large-format anamorphic lenses](https://www.highonfilms.com/the-odyssey-cinematography-imax-keighley-specs-hoytema/?ref=davidnunez.com) built from Primo 65 elements to cover the image circle. Each frame carries something on the order of [14K to 16K per color channel](https://ymcinema.com/2026/07/07/imax-odyssey-16k-per-color/?ref=davidnunez.com). 

The Cyclops is [an animatronic](https://nofilmschool.com/the-odyssey-practical-effects?ref=davidnunez.com). The Trojan Horse was [actually built](https://screenrant.com/the-odyssey-practical-effects-most-impressive/?ref=davidnunez.com). Circe’s transformations [run on prosthetics and mechanical rigs](https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/odyssey-chilling-circe-pig-scene-181011519.html?ref=davidnunez.com), the fantasy sequences were [shot on location](https://www.domusweb.it/en/news/2026/07/16/odissea-christopher-nolan-practical-special-effects.html?ref=davidnunez.com) rather than against green screens, and the digital work cleans edges rather than originating images.

When the Laestrygonians loom over Odysseus, the figure being loomed over is often [Devyn Dalton](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/style/devyn-dalton-matt-damon-stuntwoman-odyssey.html?ref=davidnunez.com), a stunt performer who is four foot six. Nolan cast her small so that seven-foot performers would read as giants in camera. That is forced perspective doing the job CGI would otherwise do, and it is the sort of thing you have to build a shot around rather than fix later. Damon said, “My double was a woman, a female stunt performer who had the greatest arms I’ve ever seen.” 

I said to myself, in the dark, that of course it had all been color graded anyway. No way it could look that good without computer manipulation.

It had been color corrected. On [a light table, with physical filters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FOdyssey%5F%282026%5Ffilm%29?ref=davidnunez.com) and not digitally, because the negative was cut and spliced by hand and printed at FotoKem, which is the last lab in the world still striking 70mm.

### The screen was the Trojan Horse.

Only [twenty-five theaters in the United States](https://www.axios.com/2026/07/23/only-25-us-theaters-odyssey-imax-70mm?ref=davidnunez.com), and forty-one worldwide, can project IMAX 70mm film. [Massachusetts is not on the list](https://www.timeout.com/usa/news/all-the-u-s-cinemas-where-you-can-watch-the-odyssey-in-70mm-imax-072926?ref=davidnunez.com). The nearest room to Boston that can show this film the way it was made is [in Providence](https://www.timeout.com/usa/news/all-the-u-s-cinemas-where-you-can-watch-the-odyssey-in-70mm-imax-072926?ref=davidnunez.com), in another state. The only screen in New England with IMAX’s full 1.43:1 frame is [Jordan’s Furniture in Reading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan%27s%5FIMAX?ref=davidnunez.com), which is laser digital, having pulled its film projectors in 2012.

The version that plays in a digital IMAX house is [1.90:1](https://www.highonfilms.com/the-odyssey-cinematography-imax-keighley-specs-hoytema/?ref=davidnunez.com), cropped down from the native frame, alongside separate masters at 2.20:1 for 70mm, 2.39:1 for 35mm, and standard digital.

This has happened before. Oppenheimer went out in 2023 shot on a mix of fifteen-perforation IMAX and five-perforation 65mm, and [thirty cinemas in the world](https://www.eyefilm.nl/en/magazine/waarom-70mm-het-beste-formaat-is-om-oppenheimer-op-te-kijken/1023803?ref=davidnunez.com) could run the true IMAX version. Everyone else got the IMAX sequences cropped at the top and bottom to match the rest of the film, and people started calling that version [Croppenheimer](https://www.eyefilm.nl/en/magazine/waarom-70mm-het-beste-formaat-is-om-oppenheimer-op-te-kijken/1023803?ref=davidnunez.com). Eye Filmmuseum, which ran one of the 70mm prints, put the physical numbers on it. A single IMAX 70mm print weighs 272 kilos and runs 17.7 kilometres. The format resolves at roughly an 18K digital equivalent, against about 12K for standard 70mm and the 4K DCP that plays almost everywhere else.

Nolan does not agree with me about any of this. Asked about what the cropping costs, he said there is [“no compromise to composition.”](https://www.eyefilm.nl/en/magazine/waarom-70mm-het-beste-formaat-is-om-oppenheimer-op-te-kijken/1023803?ref=davidnunez.com) He is probably right, since he’s an award-winning director, and all. But this was never my complaint. The picture was not ruined. I just did not know which picture I had bought.

My ticket said IMAX with Laser at AMC. I assumed I was getting the full experience, which made all of the inconveniences worth it.

Every word on that ticket is true. IMAX with Laser is a real product and a good one, and the projector in that booth is what the label says. What the label does not tell you is the shape of the room, and for this particular film the shape of the room is the entire proposition. The auditorium I sat in is, by [repeated](https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/10382/comments?ref=davidnunez.com) [account](https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g60745-d9740817-r648373732-AMC%5FLowes%5FBoston%5FCommon%5F19-Boston%5FMassachusetts.html?ref=davidnunez.com), a scope house. A wide screen, not a tall one. So the thing I bought was accurately described and I still did not know what I was buying.

It is worse than a lie, because no one has to have lied. I watched a transcode of the most rigorously analog blockbuster in thirty years, with the top and bottom removed, under a name that was accurate about the laser and silent about the crop.

I have a standard for this and I wrote it down in July. In [“It’s Not the Fake, It’s the Lie”](https://davidnunez.com/its-not-the-fake-its-the-lie/) I argued that the line worth defending is not real against fake, it is disclosed against not. I would now add a second line under it. There is a kind of non-disclosure that passes every accuracy check, where each term is defensible and the one number that decides the experience is not among the terms offered. Nolan spent a decade of craft on an aspect ratio. The purchase flow does not have a field for it.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/08/image-3.png)

IMAX Aspect Ratios via [r/imax](https://www.reddit.com/r/imax/comments/pysn87/tremendously%5Fhelpful%5Fimax%5Fratio%5Fguide/?ref=davidnunez.com)

Universal put IMAX 70mm tickets on sale [a full year ahead](https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/the-odyssey-christopher-nolan-imax-70mm-july-2026-tickets?ref=davidnunez.com)of release. [Ninety-five percent of the seats went in under twenty-four hours](https://www.avclub.com/the-odyssey-imax-70mm-tickets-sold-out?ref=davidnunez.com), most of them in the first hour. Thirty-five dollar tickets have resold [above a thousand](https://www.fox5ny.com/news/odyssey-tickets-imax-70-mm-nyc-selling-over-1000?ref=davidnunez.com), one eBay pair [reportedly hitting two thousand](https://fortune.com/2026/08/03/the-odyssey-fans-shelling-out-buy-70mm-imax-tickets-ebay/?ref=davidnunez.com), and Variety has covered the [scalping and the scams](https://variety.com/2026/film/news/imax-scalpers-odyssey-fans-ripped-off-scammers-1236816718/?ref=davidnunez.com) as their own story.

Forty-one rooms is a scarcity mechanic, and it worked. Oppenheimer had thirty of them in 2023, so the count is climbing, which is the one fact that argues against my reading of all this.

“The biggest screen I could find” was a sentence I wrote without checking. The biggest screen was findable, and it was sold out before I said it, and it was never in this state.

### Nobody in that room was tied to anything.

The film is about a man who has himself lashed to a mast so that he can hear the sirens and not be able to answer them. [I called him](https://davidnunez.com/work-harder-not-smarter/) “history’s first documented user of parental controls, applied to himself.”

I watched that, in a room where one man had a meal, one man had a camera, I [took my phone out](https://runpee.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) at least once, and the screen itself was a substitute wearing the name of the real one. Not one person in that room was bound to anything. We were all just choosing, continuously, for three hours, and mostly choosing fine, and the building was choosing too.

The fire was real. It was more real than I gave it credit for. The hearth around it is what has been quietly swapped out.

After ten years at sea, Odysseus came home and killed every man who had been eating his food, all hundred and eight of them. I am considering the hour’s drive to Providence to see a movie in the proper aspect ratio. We are not the same man.

/ David

**Listening:** [“Popcorn” by Hot Butter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK3ZP6frAMc&ref=davidnunez.com), a synthesizer instrumental, named after the highest-margin object in the building and containing no popcorn whatsoever.