Christopher Nolan‘s “The Odyssey” will open on more than 20,000 screens across mainland China, including some 90% of the territory’s Imax footprint of nearly 800 sites, distributor data shows.

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Presale box office of the Universal title reached RMB39.5 million ($5.9 million) as of August 12 (Beijing time), with combined preview and presale grosses hitting RMB91 million ($13.5 million) ahead of the film’s Aug. 14 wide release in the Middle Kingdom, per ticketing agency Maoyan.

Maoyan Pro is forecasting an opening day gross of RMB70.4 million ($10.4 million) for the film. The Imax allocation will hold even as “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” continues its successful run in Chinese theaters, with no reduction planned to “The Odyssey’s” screen count, Imax has confirmed.

Nolan traveled to China with producer Emma Thomas and stars Matt Damon and Charlize Theron for a multi-stop publicity tour. The visit opened with a photocall at a Beijing courtyard centered on a maple tree more than a 100 years old, where Thomas, Theron and Damon surprised Nolan with a birthday cake and led a serenade for the director. Nolan completed two major print interviews at the stop, while Theron and Damon met with four content creators whose combined social media following exceeds 100 million.

The tour continued with a fan screening at Universal Beijing Resort’s Universal CityWalk Cinema, organized with the platform Red Note, China’s answer to Instagram. Hundreds of influencers and film fans attended a Q&A with the talent, and the event generated more than 10 trending topics on the platform within hours.

Nolan, Thomas, Damon and Theron also attended “The Odyssey’s” China premiere on July 30 at the China National Film Museum on an Imax GT-certified screen. A photocall in front of roughly 500 fans and media outlets preceded a moderated Q&A for press and VIPs, and the hashtags #TheOdysseyMovie and #TheOdysseyChinaPremiere trended on Weibo within two hours. The talent also took part in a press and content creator junket with an estimated combined reach of 1 billion viewers, readers and users.

A separate sit-down during the trip, Nolan’s interview with Beijing-based podcaster Zhong Shu, has since gone viral online, drawing praise for its philosophical depth on the film’s themes.

Adrian Tong, senior analyst at research company Media Partners Asia, points to Nolan’s own China box office history as the relevant yardstick. “Oppenheimer” finished around $61 million in mainland China, with “Tenet” landing in similar territory, and Maoyan logged more than 250,000 want-to-see registrations for “The Odyssey” before presales opened. “A nine-figure run would be exceptional,” Tong tells Variety, since little from Hollywood outside the biggest franchise titles reaches that level in China anymore.

Near-total Imax network commitments are usually reserved for the biggest local titles, making the allocation for a Hollywood film unusual in the current market. “But it’s the rational response to observable demand, plus favorable economics,” Tong says, pointing to how Nolan’s films consistently over-index on the Imax format in China. “In China they’re not really separable.”

“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” has surpassed $200 million in China in 16 days of release, though no other newly released international film in 2026 has approached that mark, with the rest of the Hollywood slate landing mostly in the RMB100 million to RMB310 million ($14.8 million to $46 million) range. Tong says the market hasn’t closed to Hollywood so much as become extremely selective, adding, “the path to sustainable blockbuster success is now narrower and far steeper to navigate.”