Imax seats are listed at up to five times face value as movie tickets sit outside the country’s sweeping new resale ban taking effect this month
The ticket resale frenzy that greeted Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” in North America has arrived in South Korea, where scalpers are flipping Imax seats at steep markups days before the film’s Wednesday opening.
The Homeric epic ranks second on the Korean Film Council’s presales chart with a 30.5 percent share as of Sunday morning, trailing only “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” which opened July 29. Nolan is set to arrive in Seoul on Monday for a press conference and a talk show appearance with stars Matt Damon and Charlize Theron as part of a major promotional campaign for one of the summer’s biggest releases.
As the opening nears, tickets for Imax showings at CGV Yongsan — the central Seoul flagship of Korea’s largest multiplex chain — have begun to appear on the country’s biggest online resale marketplaces.
Asking prices run from 50,000 won to 100,000 won ($35 to $69) apiece, with weekend showtimes and prime seats at the top of the range. Face value runs 17,000 to 21,000 won depending on the day and hour.
Some sellers have posted upwards of 10 tickets per screening, suggesting automated bots or organized scalping operations may be at work.
“The Odyssey” is the first feature shot entirely with Imax cameras, and the director has long encouraged audiences to see the film in the format. There are just 41 theaters worldwide — 25 of them in the US — able to project the Imax 70mm prints the film was made for, and tickets for those showings were reselling for as much as $1,000 following its North American opening last month.
Korea has no Imax 70mm theater, but Yongsan offers the closest thing to Nolan’s intended presentation. Its screen, the largest in Asia and third-largest of its kind in the world, is the only one in the country that displays the film’s full 1.43:1 Imax frame without cropping.
In January, lawmakers here passed a ban on scalping at concerts and sporting events, with fines of up to 50 times the ticket price. The law, which takes effect Aug. 28, does not cover movie tickets.
Scalping has flared up around major releases in Korea before, mostly big-budget Hollywood titles that drive demand for premium screens. Imax 3D tickets for “Avengers: Infinity War” sold for 110,000 won in 2018, about five times the regular price, and similar listings followed “Avatar: The Way of Water” (2022) and “Dune: Part Two” (2024).
In a review of the pending bill last year, the Culture Ministry backed the goal of rooting out the practice but recommended limiting any ban to online sales, which existing laws do not cover.
moonkihoon@heraldcorp.com