What happens when two Hollywood giants want the same IMAX screen and only one of them is Christopher Nolan?

This July, two of the year's biggest Hollywood tentpoles arrive in Indian theatres barely a fortnight apart. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey opens on July 17. Spider-Man: Brand New Day, starring Tom Holland and Zendaya, follows on July 30. On paper, this should have been a dream month for exhibitors. In practice, it has become a case study of how unevenly bargaining power is distributed in Indian cinema's premium-screen economy.

Sony Pictures has announced that the Spider-Man: Brand New Day movie will not be released in IMAX in India, as confirmed by a fan who commented on the trailer. The film will get a premium large format (PLF) release, including PXL, 4DX, ScreenX, Marco XE, and so forth, but there will be no IMAX release in India, not at launch, and there may never be an IMAX release of this film in India.

The reason why this film will not have an IMAX release in India is that the Odyssey is the first full-length feature film to be shot exclusively on IMAX's 70mm cameras, and, based on that technical detail and not as a marketing pitch, the IMAX Corporation has strong reasons for protecting its primary IMAX theatre system. According to sources in the global film industry, this has resulted in a worldwide IMAX premiere for the Odyssey, including an exclusive several-week IMAX booking in India, thereby preventing all other IMAX studios from screening this film during its IMAX exclusive period.

This article explores what that exclusivity reveals about the bargaining power among studios, exhibitors, and the IMAX format itself.

The Oppenheimer Precedent
Everybody is focused on Oppenheimer as the production mark for measuring various distribution methods. Christopher Nolan's 2023 movie had remarkable success with IMAX through an extended run, which was way beyond the industry standard of just a few weeks, partially due to an IMAX 70mm becoming a marketing option, along with the audience response to seeing movies in that format alone was incredible, as proven by the continual presence in theatres for weeks after being released.

Trade magazines state that The Odyssey will be treated the same way as Oppenheimer. They expect that IMAX will evaluate the run of The Odyssey after approximately a minimum of an initial three-week window; however, considering the performance record of all of Nolan's IMAX releases, it seems very unlikely that IMAX will revert to the regular slate of films at any multiplex, let alone accommodate cutting prints of their own version of Spider-Man for The Odyssey.

This presents a major problem for Sony. Spider-Man: Brand New Day will release only two weeks into that window, and while they state they will re-evaluate bookings every three weeks once Spider-Man opens, this will be virtually impossible unless The Odyssey has below-average box-office numbers. Based on both the box-office results and the fact that it will be a Nolan release, the odds appear to be stacked against Spider-Man's chances of success in IMAX. The final bit of irony none of the producers or actors probably considered is that Tom Holland and Zendaya star in both films, so even if Spider-Man opens wide in IMAX theatres, its release would take away from the box-office potential of their other production. It would be the same actors appearing in both.

It's worth noting that this isn't an isolated incident either. Avengers: Doomsday, slated for December, is reportedly bracing for a similar squeeze in several international markets due to its clash with Dune: Part Three. Disney has apparently pre-empted the problem by rolling out its own PLF certification, "Infinity Vision," essentially building a parallel premium format rather than fighting for IMAX real estate it may not win. That tells you everything about how studios are reading the room. IMAX bookings are no longer assumed; they are negotiated, contested and, increasingly, lost.

Déjà Vu at the Box Office
For anyone who has followed Indian distribution patterns, none of this should be shocking. Screen wars have been a fixture of Bollywood release calendars for over a decade, and they have rarely been about fairness. They have been about leverage.

On Diwali 2012, Yash Chopra's last film, Jab Tak Hai Jaan, released the same day as Ajay Devgn's Son of Sardar, and the competition for screens between the two became one of the biggest distribution battles of the time. Established studios and major stars always had the upper hand when competing against smaller or mid-tier films, with exhibitors following the trend of offering them the safest options to maximise their weekly revenue. The trend that established names take up a larger share of screen time than anyone else has remained true since.

The only thing that has changed is who is taking the larger proportions. Just a few weeks ago, Anurag Kashyap spoke out again about this imbalance, this time regarding a film outside Hollywood. He used his own film, Bandar, (as well as several other films, such as Main Vaapas Aaunga, Governor, and Sing Gheetam) as an example of how many daily shows they were getting compared to the number of daily shows being given to Obsession in Bengaluru. Ultimately, Kashyap's argument wasn't about that specific film.

It was about a structural problem: Indian productions, particularly the mid-budget and independent ones, keep getting squeezed out of their own home market within days of release, regardless of critical reception. Exhibitors will fairly counter that they're running a business and that shows go where the footfall is. But that argument is circular. Films don't get the chance to build footfall if they're starved of shows before audiences even know they exist.

What's different about the Odyssey-Spider-Man situation is that it isn't an Indian film losing out to a Hollywood juggernaut. It's two Hollywood juggernauts fighting each other, and Hollywood losing to Hollywood. That's a sign of how much the competitive landscape has shifted.

Why Hollywood's Appetite in India has only Grown
A decade ago, there were different expectations surrounding the release of a Hollywood film, especially regarding how audiences outside metro multiplexes would perceive it and how those audiences would anticipate it. A lot has changed since the pandemic with respect to viewing habits; OTT platforms have opened up a whole new world of Western content to Indian audiences, and a plethora of successful runs at the box office for theatrical releases of Hollywood films have all contributed to an increasing appetite for international tentpole films among Indian moviegoers.

For example, both The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day saw their initial ticket sales begin over a month before their release dates, and both films reportedly sold very well, indicating that Indian moviegoers are no longer treating them as niche, English-language films but rather as mainstream film events.

The shift in how the Indian movie-going public views Hollywood releases has created an extremely competitive environment for exhibitors seeking screen space for films' theatrical releases. Historically, Hollywood films accounted for only a small percentage of box-office revenue, so there wasn't as much at stake in competing for screen space. Now that two major Hollywood films are opening within two weeks, exhibitors must choose which to support to maximise the likelihood of their IMAX venue being at capacity for as long as possible.

The Takeaway
Take out the disappointing aspect of fan, and you can see how easy it is to understand the power of bargaining position, from the fact that IMAX, as a format, creates an advantage by having the only existing resource that supports an entire theatre experience, which is a limited number of screens that can produce the type of projection that justifies the premium price ticket. On the other side is Nolan, and his films made in the IMAX format have shown there is strong demand, as they play longer in theatres than any other format of the same film.

The problem Sony and Spider-Man are facing (even though they are among the largest franchises in the world) is that their products were sold into the wrong time period (for film). As a result, they cannot provide any legal or commercial performance argument for why they should be displaced from a booking already secured with IMAX.

When looking at this example of the meaning of Sony and Spider-Man to Indian distributors and exhibitors, the focus should be less on the Spider-Man product and more on how format exclusivity has become a key point that studios work towards, rather than just hoping they will get one. More examples are to be expected. Studios that do not have early, secured exclusivity on a PLF (such as ScreenX, 4DX, Marco XE, or the new Disney Infinity Vision format) will find themselves continually pushed into second-tier premium formats, regardless of how big their franchises may be.

Spider-Man will still look good on ScreenX and sound thunderous on 4DX. But for a chunk of Indian fans who specifically wanted the IMAX scale for a film built around city-swinging set pieces, the absence will sting. And for the industry watching closely, the bigger story isn't really about web-slinging at all. It's about who gets to write the rules of screen access in a market where everyone, Hollywood and Bollywood alike, is fighting for the same limited real estate.