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Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' becomes first film shot entirely on IMAX cameras
The large-format feature based on Homer’s epic was shot entirely on the IMAX Keighley Camera, a newly developed sound-dampened system designed to capture intimate dialogue scenes
- PUBLISHED: Thu 7 May 2026, 1:41 PM UPDATED: Thu 7 May 2026, 1:50 PM
Christopher Nolan has finally done what he’s been trying to do for most of his career: shoot an entire feature on IMAX film. With The Odyssey, his upcoming adaptation of Homer’s epic, the director is not only back with his signature larger-than-life spectacle but it’s also “the first film shot entirely on IMAX cameras,” as he revealed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. For a director who has been edging closer to this milestone with every project, this feels like a long‑planned finish line.
Nolan traces the obsession back to being a teenager in Chicago. “I fell in love with IMAX film when I was about 16, watching documentaries shot on IMAX at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago,” he told Colbert. Sitting in those science‑museum screenings, he found himself asking a question that later became the bedrock of his whole career, “What if you told a giant Hollywood story in this format?”
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He began answering that question on The Dark Knight, convincing both the studio and IMAX to let him shoot only the action set‑pieces in the format. “On The Dark Knight, I convinced the studio to let us try and do our action sequences… just the action scenes… on IMAX,” he recalled. From there, the percentage of IMAX in each film climbed steadily through Interstellar and Oppenheimer. “Over the years I’ve tried to use the format more and more,” he said. “What I always wanted to do was do the entire movie that way.”
The problem, he said, was that IMAX cameras, running massive 65mm/70mm film through at 24 frames per second, are incredibly loud. “The cameras are so noisy,” Nolan added. “Literally, because the film is huge and it’s running through 24 frames a second. So, it’s a very, very noisy camera.” For large‑scale action, you may be able to live with that. But for two actors talking half a metre from the lens, you can’t.
However, as noise‑reduction tools improved, Nolan tested material he’d shot with Cillian Murphy on Oppenheimer. “The IMAX camera was placed very close, while Cillian was speaking and we hit it. I could uncover his original dialogue, but he was shouting over the camera,” he said. “So it was the wrong performance.”
That became the real sticking point. "What we needed was a way to get an IMAX camera that you can actually shoot the dialogue with."
That’s where The Odyssey comes in. Nolan and his team went to IMAX with this specific challenge. “We told them we’re working on The Odyssey and if ever there were a story where you want to do the whole film on IMAX, this is it. [And we asked them if they could] find a way to build an enclosure for the camera.”
The company responded by building new cameras for this film and a huge sound‑dampening system. “They built us this huge box that you put the camera in. It weighs about 400 pounds and it silenced the camera. So we could, you know, do very intimate scenes.”
Colbert then joked about whether this new IMAX camera is “called the Nolan now”. But the filmmaker was quick to clarify that it’s actually called the Keighley Camera, "named after my friend David Keighley, who sadly passed away just as we were finishing the dailies on this film, before we edited it," he added. “He had been my IMAX mentor for almost 20 years. And he’s the guy who made so much of what we’ve done possible.”
All of this is in service of a story built for that kind of scale. The Odyssey reimagines Homer’s epic for the big screen, following Odysseus’ long, treacherous journey home after the Trojan War, with Gods, monsters and the unforgiving seas, while his wife and son hold the fort in his absence.
Led by Matt Damon as Odysseus, with a heavyweight ensemble around him, the film promises to stage that mythic homecoming on the largest canvas available and, for the first time, keep audiences in that floor‑to‑ceiling IMAX experience even when the camera moves in close enough to catch a whisper.
