The Odyssey Tickets Being Resold by Scalpers at 5 Times Their Price in South Korea

Tickets for Christopher Nolan's new movie, The Odyssey, are being resold for up to five times their normal price in South Korea. The film opened there on August 5, and demand for IMAX screenings has been so high that regular fans can barely find a seat. South Korea's film council has now stepped in, asking people to report suspected ticket scalping as the problem grows.

IMAX tickets at CGV Yongsan I'Park Mall in Seoul normally cost between 17,000 and 22,000 won, which is about £9 to £12. But on secondhand trading websites, the same tickets have been listed for more than 100,000 won — roughly £53. In one extreme case, three seats together for an evening showing on August 14 were being offered for nearly 300,000 won, or about £158.

Scalpers started advertising tickets before the movie even opened. Some sellers were listing more than 10 tickets for a single screening, which made officials suspicious that computer programs were being used to grab large numbers of seats automatically. These kinds of programs, called 'macro' or 'bot' programs, can buy tickets much faster than a person typing on a keyboard.

Part of the reason demand is so intense is what makes The Odyssey special. It is the first movie ever filmed entirely on IMAX cameras. South Korea has 27 IMAX theaters, but only one — the CGV Yongsan auditorium in Seoul — can show the film in its full picture size without cutting any of the image, making tickets there especially hard to get.

The demand has pushed some moviegoers to travel far beyond Seoul. A 25-year-old named Shin Myeong-ho made the trip from Seoul's Seongbuk district all the way to the city of Daejeon on August 8 just to watch the film in IMAX. He said that if he had stayed in Seoul, he would have had to wait 'at least two weeks' for a ticket.

South Korea's film council, known as KOFIC, has announced it will accept reports of suspected scalping on an ongoing basis. It is asking audiences to flag tickets being resold above face value on secondhand marketplaces and social media. People can report sellers who appear to have made unusually large bookings, and reports can be sent by email with details like the cinema name, screening time, and screenshots as evidence.

The Odyssey has been performing extremely well in South Korea, where movie attendance is still bouncing back after the pandemic. The film stayed at the top of the weekend box office in its second week and passed five million admissions on just its 13th day of release. It reached that milestone five days faster than The King's Warden, a hugely popular Korean historical drama that eventually drew more than 16 million viewers.

Ticket scalping for big movies is not a new problem in South Korea. In 2018, IMAX 3D tickets for Avengers: Infinity War were resold for around five times the original price, and similar activity happened with Avatar: The Way of Water in 2022 and Dune: Part Two in 2024. Concert tickets have seen even bigger markups, with BTS tickets for 2026 shows listed for more than 39 times their face value on one platform.

South Korea has announced tougher anti-scalping rules that will take effect on August 28. However, these new rules will only cover concert and sports tickets, not movie tickets. The rules will ban reselling performance and sports tickets for profit and allow fines of up to 50 times the amount made from the illegal sale.