Universal Pictures said Thursday that Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey will return to more than 1,000 screens across the United States and Canada beginning Dec. 11. The studio announcement covers standard and premium presentations, including IMAX and IMAX 70mm, giving viewers another chance to see the film in cinemas nearly five months after its July opening.

The new booking follows about $1.8 billion in worldwide ticket sales and comes as IMAX reports its highest quarterly box office on record. The December engagement also puts an established hit back in theaters just before two new blockbusters arrive. For theaters, that creates a chance to sell more seats for a proven title before they reassign screens to holiday releases.

A wider return than October’s

The December rerelease is separate from the October engagement, which began Oct. 9 at select IMAX theaters and included 70mm screenings. This time Universal is booking the film across formats in both countries. The screen count describes the whole rerelease, so it does not tell viewers how many locations will project the film on IMAX 70mm or how long an individual theater will carry it.

Matt Damon stars as Odysseus in Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s epic about the Greek king’s journey home after the Trojan War. It was shot entirely with IMAX cameras, which helps explain why the format figures so prominently in the return. An IMAX listing alone does not specify film projection: a screening marked IMAX 70mm is a distinct presentation. Moviegoers looking for it should check the format listed for the individual showtime.

The numbers behind the return

Universal puts the worldwide gross at about $1.8 billion. Independent tracker The Numbers likewise records roughly $626 million in domestic ticket sales and nearly $1.18 billion internationally. The tracker puts the domestic opening weekend at about $124 million, or roughly one-fifth of the domestic total to date. Most of that market’s revenue therefore came after opening weekend, before the new December screenings were announced.

The same tracker lists Nov. 17 for the film’s home release, ahead of the Dec. 11 cinema return. That sequence makes the December booking a different proposition from the summer launch. The original run offered the first opportunity to see the film. In December, theaters will be asking customers to choose the auditorium, screen and sound even when they can watch the same story at home.

One film drove much of IMAX’s quarter

In its quarterly results, IMAX said The Odyssey generated $538 million in worldwide IMAX ticket sales during the three months through September, out of $712 million for all films on its screens. That puts the movie at roughly three-quarters of the quarter’s IMAX box office, a concentration also reported by Barron’s. The film’s cumulative IMAX total subsequently passed $550 million, the company said, accounting for about 30% of the movie’s overall worldwide gross.

Those figures measure spending on tickets. They do not show what share of viewers chose the format, since ticket prices can differ by auditorium. Nor is global box office the same as revenue IMAX itself booked: the company reported $175 million in quarterly revenue, up 64% from a year earlier. The two measures show different things about the same release: the volume of ticket sales at theaters and the financial results of the company supplying the technology and services.

The quarter also shows how far ahead the film was of other premium releases. IMAX reported $58 million in quarterly ticket sales for Spider-Man: Brand New Day on its screens, compared with $538 million for The Odyssey. Those totals describe their runs on IMAX screens during the quarter, rather than how the two titles performed across all formats. The distinction matters when theaters decide which films to move onto their largest screens.

IMAX also reported agreements for more than 100 systems so far this year, with 65% going to new locations. Those signings point to plans for a larger network over time. They do not mean the systems are already open, or that those sites will be equipped for 70mm projection in December.

A short window before the holiday slate

The Dec. 11 start is one week ahead of Dune: Part Three and Avengers: Doomsday, TheWrap reported. IMAX has already pointed to advance sales for Dune in its earnings release. The calendar gives The Odyssey an opening weekend before those films arrive, but the announcement does not establish how many premium showtimes it will retain once theaters make room for the new releases.

The December run is unlikely to resemble July’s opening in scale: the original release began at more than 3,900 domestic theaters, while Universal’s announcement describes a limited return on more than 1,000 screens across formats. The units are different, since one theater can have multiple screens. What exhibitors can watch this time is whether a film with months of prior exposure still sells enough seats to justify another booking, and whether that demand holds outside the handful of venues equipped for the film presentation.