IMAX Screens Pulled The Odyssey for Toxic on Day One. They Brought It Back Two Days Later.

When Toxic released on August 26, its distributors secured nearly all of India's IMAX screens for the film, pushing out Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey after a genuinely unusual 40-day run in the format, one that had pulled in roughly 90 crore from IMAX alone and was still holding 43 percent occupancy on its final day. Only Broadway Cinemas in Coimbatore kept both films running throughout, splitting its IMAX slate between the two.

The reversal came fast. Toxic's opening-day IMAX occupancy of 51.6 percent, against The Odyssey's 48.7 percent, fell sharply to 17.4 percent by the very next day, while The Odyssey held firm at 37.6 percent. Major chains, including Cinepolis, PVR, Inox and Miraj, began re-adding Odyssey shows across Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Chennai, Kochi, Surat and Lucknow from August 28, just two days after being pulled. Trade sources had expected any such reversal, if it happened at all, to take a week or two; this one happened in 48 hours. Bengaluru remains the one major market still running Toxic exclusively in IMAX through the weekend.

The reversal came fast.

The swing says as much about exhibitor decision-making as it does about either film's numbers: screen allocation on a premium format followed real-time occupancy rather than a fixed release-week commitment, and a proven performer got its slots back the moment the new release stopped justifying them.