Tom Cruise’s Big Upper West Side Night Started With a Disaster and Ended With a Few Very Lucky Strangers

You can blame the thunderstorm for the delay, but you can thank it for everything that happened after.

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IMAX had a screening of “The Odyssey” set for AMC Lincoln Square on Wednesday night, and the whole room was waiting on one guest: the movie star who’s spent the last decade turning “see it in a theater” into a personal crusade. But not even Cruise can outrun the weather. A surprise storm scrambled his travel into Manhattan, and by the time he finally reached the Upper West Side at 10:45 p.m., Christopher Nolan’s Greek epic had already wrapped and the credits were long gone.

Here’s where it got good. Rather than call it a night, Cruise had IMAX re-screen the entire film just for him, according to Page Six. But he didn’t watch alone. Before the lights went down, he reportedly rounded up every AMC staffer who was mid-cleanup, sweeping the aisles and restocking the concession stand, and pulled them into the auditorium to watch the whole thing with him. He then did what he’s made a habit of lately, posting the movie to his Instagram and urging his followers to go buy a ticket.

If you walked past 68th and Broadway this week, you may have also clocked the reason for the crowds: a massive Trojan horse installation planted right outside the theater, rearing up over the plaza beneath the “Odyssey” marquee.

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The timing is no accident. “The Odyssey” is Nolan’s first film since 2023’s “Oppenheimer,” and reportedly the first feature shot entirely on IMAX film cameras. It opens nationwide Friday, July 17, with an ensemble that includes Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o and Charlize Theron.

As for Cruise, he’s having a moment off the clock, too. He picked up an Honorary Oscar at last year’s Governors Awards, and he’s next up in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s “Digger,” a satirical comedy in which he’s nearly unrecognizable as a balding, potbellied oil tycoon. That one hits theaters October 2.

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