Despite coming in behind Barbie as the second-biggest hit of summer 2023, Christopher Nolan‘s Oppenheimer is still going strong at the worldwide box office, where it will surpass $600 million dollars (about 13 billion crowns) this weekend.
In Prague, meanwhile, Oppenheimer is still the hot-ticket item that audiences are fighting to see. The Czech capital’s IMAX cinema at Cinema City Flora is the only location in continental Europe and just one of 30 worldwide to screen the film in director Nolan’s preferred 70mm IMAX format.
According to Cinema City, residents of 15 European countries including locations as far away as Spain, Italy, and Finland had purchased tickets see Oppenheimer in Prague before its July 20 release. That number has likely increased over the past weeks as fans from across the continent flock to Prague.
In its first three weeks of release, Oppenheimer was screening four times a day at Cinema City Flora‘s IMAX, and it sold out every screening. Heading into its fourth and fifth weeks of release, tickets to Oppenheimer had also sold out through August 23 shortly after they were made available.
Anecdotally, we’ve seen multiple disappointed fans turned away from the box office at Cinema City Flora, told that not only are there no tickets available to see Oppenheimer in IMAX on that particular day, but no future days, either.
Due to contractual obligations, Oppenheimer is no longer an exclusive at Prague’s IMAX cinema, with the surprisingly good Gran Turismo (which still has plenty of tickets available) taking mid-day slots at 12:10 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. before Nolan’s epic sweeps in for sold-out shows at 6:10 p.m. and 9:50 p.m.
Next weekend, the situation becomes even more complicated with the release of the DC superhero movie Blue Beetle, filmed entirely with IMAX cameras, which will be given an additional three IMAX showtimes at 12:50 p.m., 3:30 p.m., and 6:10p.m. Cinema City will squeeze in Gran Turismo at 10:00 a.m., followed by a single Oppenheimer screening at 9:50 p.m., which have also sold out.
To help cater to the incredible demand, Cinema City has just added some additional after-midnight screenings of Oppenheimer on Friday, August 19 and Saturday, August 20 at 12:45 a.m. If you’re fast enough, and don’t mind getting out of the three-hour epic at four in the morning, tickets to these screenings are still available at time of writing.
Here’s the good news: no IMAX films open from the weekend of Thursday, August 24, meaning Oppenheimer should* be able to get back some screening slots from Gran Turismo and Blue Beetle.
And the bad news: an additional four IMAX films release across the next five weeks through the end of September: the Denzel Washington thriller The Equalizer 3, the horror sequel The Nun 2, Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot mystery A Haunting in Venice, and Gareth Edwards’ original sci-fi flick The Creator.
While demand to see Oppenheimer at Prague’s IMAX cinema is likely to remain high through the next month, it will have to compete with these features for screening slots at Cinema City Flora due to contractual obligations.
Still, Cinema City should be able to find at least one IMAX showtime for Oppenheimer daily over the course of the next month as long as cinemagoers continue to book out every screening of the movie.
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