AMC Lincoln Square on Manhattan's Upper West Side is running overnight IMAX 70mm screenings of Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" well past its debut weekend, and the crowds keep showing up at 2 and 3 a.m.
On a recent weekday at 2:45 a.m., moviegoers were still filing into the theater for a late-night showing of the Nolan film, part of a demand surge that has forced AMC to extend operating hours weeks after the movie opened. The phenomenon is not limited to "The Odyssey." Days before the article's publication, fully grown adults wrapped a line around the block at the same Manhattan theater to buy IMAX 70mm tickets for "Dune: Part Three," which opens in December. Digital ticketing platforms buckled under the load. Resale listings appeared on eBay, one asking close to $1,000 for two last-row seats. Social media posts circulated claims that a single buyer walked away with roughly 80 "Dune" tickets, though that figure remains unconfirmed.
What is confirmed: the American movie audience, written off repeatedly over the past decade, is not just alive, it is setting alarms for the middle of the night and treating a film screening like a stadium event. And AMC, for all its recent financial turbulence, is happy to keep the lights on.
Joe Colón, a 29-year-old marketing specialist living in New York City, restructured his entire day around a 3 a.m. showing of "The Odyssey." He slept from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., spent the evening out on the town, and arrived at the Upper West Side theater 15 minutes before showtime. He told the New York Post the experience was worth the schedule disruption.
"My faith never wavered. It also helps that it's pretty hard to fall asleep in the biggest IMAX theater in the country with some of the loudest speakers I've ever heard."
Colón also reported seeing TikTok videos of people buying wheelchairs to access accessible seating at sold-out showings, a claim he relayed with a mix of admiration and disbelief.
"I low-key respect the commitment. That is insane."
Broadway actor Christian Probst, 32, currently appearing in *Moulin Rouge! The Musical*, bought two "Odyssey" seats at Lincoln Square back in early July, before he even knew who would take the second ticket. On the night of the screening, he performed on stage, then met his friend Simone Policano at her childhood apartment on the Upper West Side. The two took a power nap from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. and headed to the theater for a 2 a.m. show.
Policano, a 32-year-old actor, author, and small business co-founder living in Brooklyn, did not hesitate when Probst offered the seat.
"We were basically children before a red-eye."
Probst said he never got tired. "I didn't even yawn once," he told the Post. After the screening ended, he biked from the Lincoln Center area to Union Square through the empty early-morning streets of Manhattan.
"It really was emotional. It made me fall in love with this city."
Policano left the theater around 5:30 a.m. and e-biked uptown. She noted that maintenance staff were mopping the lobby during the screening, "which I guess could be normal for 2 a.m., but this time they certainly had an audience." She said she would have chosen the 2 a.m. slot even if a regular showtime had been available.
"The movie is incredible, don't get me wrong, and unfortunately the IMAX 70mm screen really does make a difference. But I would've chosen 2 a.m. even if a normal showtime had been available. You gotta do it for the lore."
The overnight "Odyssey" screenings are only half the story. Earlier that same week, the launch of "Dune: Part Three" IMAX 70mm tickets at AMC Lincoln Square, the only New York City location offering the premium format, triggered a frenzy that caught even the chain's leadership off guard. A social media user posted footage of a line snaking around the block. Digital platforms failed under the volume. And resale listings appeared almost immediately, including one eBay posting that asked close to $1,000 for a pair of last-row tickets.
Unconfirmed social media claims alleged that one buyer had purchased roughly 80 tickets. AMC CEO Adam Aron acknowledged the chaos in a post on X.
"We thought we were ready, but we weren't."
Ryan Noonan, AMC's vice president of corporate communications, told the Post that overnight screenings are not a publicity stunt. They are a response to real demand that exceeds normal operating hours. Lincoln Square's IMAX 70mm auditorium is accustomed to late-night showings on opening weekends, but the sustained interest in "The Odyssey" has pushed the practice well beyond the first few days.
"It's not the norm, and it's not feasible at every location, but there's always a little extra magic when a title resonates so strongly with moviegoers that our traditional operating hours aren't enough to meet demand."
Noonan added that even several weekends after the film's debut, AMC is still running overnight hours on weekends at the location. "Demand continues to support it," he said.
The numbers back up what AMC is seeing on the ground. "The Odyssey" earned $87 million domestically in its second weekend, a drop of only 30 percent from its opening, marking Christopher Nolan's best-ever second-weekend performance, AP News reported. Globally, the film has accumulated an estimated $639.6 million. IMAX screens alone accounted for $48 million in worldwide earnings that weekend. The 41 IMAX 70mm screens around the world pulled in $5.2 million, and most of their showtimes are sold out through September.
Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Rentrak, framed the film's trajectory in marathon terms. "For 'The Odyssey' it's a marathon, it's not a sprint," he said, calling the second-weekend figure a number that "would be an impressive opening weekend for any film."
That sustained performance helps explain why AMC is willing to staff a Manhattan theater at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday. The audience is not thinning out. It is showing up in the dark and paying full price.
Ross Melnick, who directs the Carsey-Wolf Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and holds a presidential chair in media studies, argued that the phenomenon is rooted in scarcity. Premium large-format screens, especially true IMAX 70mm, are rare. AMC Lincoln Square is the only venue in New York City offering the format for "Dune: Part Three." That bottleneck turns a movie ticket into a commodity with the same dynamics as a limited sneaker drop or a sold-out concert.
"In a world consumed by digital screens, content is everywhere but context is everything."
Melnick invoked a line from Marcus Loew, the early-twentieth-century theater mogul: "We sell tickets to theaters, not movies." The point, Melnick suggested, is that the venue itself, the physical experience, the screen size, the sound, has become the product again.
"It's rare that moviegoing is treated like a rock concert today."
Paul de Lumen, an assistant professor of film, animation, and new media at the University of Tampa, made a similar observation. The rush of securing a scarce ticket has become part of the entertainment, not just a means to it.
"The thrill of securing seats and seeing a limited release film is providing just as big of a rush as getting the most exclusive sneakers or concert tickets."
The overnight lines at Lincoln Square do not mean the broader theater industry is in perfect health. AMC's Kips Bay location, also in Manhattan, is set to close later in 2026 after the property owner decided to terminate the lease early. The contrast is sharp: one AMC theater in New York runs screenings past 3 a.m. to meet demand, while another shuts its doors for good.
The gap illustrates what Melnick and de Lumen described, audiences are not returning to movies in general. They are chasing specific, scarce, premium experiences. A standard multiplex screening of a mid-budget film does not create the same urgency as a sold-out IMAX 70mm showing of a Nolan epic. The market is splitting. The top end is white-hot. Everything else is fighting for survival.
Nolan himself has been at the center of this shift before. The 2023 "Barbenheimer" phenomenon, the simultaneous release of "Barbie" and Nolan's "Oppenheimer", was widely credited with reviving post-pandemic theatrical attendance. "The Odyssey" appears to be extending that momentum, at least for filmmakers and formats that can command the cultural spotlight.
But the bulk-buying allegations around "Dune: Part Three" raise a question AMC has not fully answered. If one buyer can reportedly walk away with 80 tickets and resell them on eBay at massive markups, ordinary moviegoers, the ones setting alarms and rearranging their sleep schedules, are the ones who pay the price. Noonan told the Post that AMC is aware of the concern, and Aron's post acknowledged the company was caught flat-footed. What specific steps AMC plans to take remains unclear.
The free market works when the rules are fair. When a handful of scalpers can corner the supply of a public entertainment, the people who actually want to sit in the seats end up bidding against middlemen. AMC built its brand on accessibility. If overnight screenings prove that demand is real, then protecting that demand from exploitation is not just good customer service, it is basic stewardship of a business model that finally has some life in it again.
