u/SashimiMojo

I started analyzing seat occupancy in the Philippines during The Odyssey's run. After five weeks of showtimes, one thing is clear: people want to see this film on the biggest screen.

The film has grossed $1.3 billion worldwide, an incredible box office run that is still going. In the Philippines, it filled more than 650,000 seats in its first 33 days. But the more interesting story is how strongly audiences preferred IMAX.

The same film, in the same chain, on the same days. Eight IMAX rooms at 50.8 percent full against 296 ordinary rooms at 11.3. IMAX leads in every single week of the run, and all eight of those rooms are laser.

For 28 days no other film played a single IMAX show anywhere I can measure. When it finally shared them on 12 August, the two films that took the slots ran at 4.5 and 2.7 percent full. SM Mall of Asia's IMAX carried the run at 82.8 percent.

The film is currently scheduled to run until August 25, and it may continue further if more schedules are added. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend watching it on the big screen!

Find a showtime here:
https://takilya.ph/movies/the-odyssey?date=2026-08-20&fmt=IMAX

Have you watched The Odyssey? Do you think it's worth the IMAX experience?

Hi everyone. The Cinemalaya festival is over, so I counted everything: every screening, every seat, across all 12 days and all 7 branches that carried it. That comes out to 448 screenings, 13 films, and 61,806 seats filled out of 126,267 offered, or 48.9% full.

Did the Filipinos show up? Partly. In those same 7 buildings over those same 12 days, every other film on those screens averaged just 24.6% full across 1,184 screenings. In other words, roughly two Cinemalaya seats were filled for every one filled by the commercial titles playing beside them.

Cinemalaya accounted for 27.5% of all screenings in these cinemas, yet took 43.8% of all seats filled. The films also grew their audience as the festival went on, going from 21.9% full on the first Sunday to 62.5% by Thursday.

What was unfortunate was how few showtimes were available. Each of the five Ayala branches carried only 41 to 43 screenings across the entire 12-day run, and anyone who wanted to see these films had to work around that. More cinemas carrying them would likely have changed these numbers.

A few notes before the decks below: a festival is nothing like a wide release. There are fewer showtimes, audiences often travel specifically to see these films, and scarcity itself can help fill rooms. So none of this proves that these films would perform the same way in a normal commercial release. The weather may also have played a role, especially given the flooding and generally severe conditions throughout August, which likely affected attendance.

What I can say is that, in the rooms these films were given, people chose them at roughly twice the rate they chose what was playing on the next screen, and they kept choosing them more as the festival went on.

Cinemalaya 22 gave us good films made by people who worked hard on them. It would have been nice to give them more visibility by giving Filipino films wider releases, so more Filipinos could appreciate them.

Below are some of the analytics I collected across the 12 days. Hope you find them interesting!

Every film, ranked by how full its rooms ran. 2 Valid IDs led at 86.8 percent across 55 screenings and all twelve days, so a sustained run rather than one lucky gala. Filipinana closed the festival with two sold-out 8:30pm screenings at Shangri-La on 16 August, 692 seats. 58TH sold out its single screening, 346 of 346.

The same films at all seven branches, with the average audience beside each figure. Red Carpet 67.6 percent, Glorietta 55.4, Gateway 54.6, down to Market! Market! at 23.4. Nine of the eleven films seen at more than one branch ran fullest at Red Carpet, and 2 Valid IDs hit 98.9 percent at Circuit Makati. Room size drives some of this: Glorietta filled 55.4 percent of a 172-seat room, 95 people a show, while Manila Bay filled 32.3 percent of a 383-seat room, 124 people a show.

The festival against everything else showing in those same seven buildings, day by day. The dashed line is 27.5 percent, Cinemalaya's share of the screenings there. Above it, the festival drew a bigger share of the audience than of the schedule, and eleven of the twelve days are above it. Midweek the commercial films fell to 10 or 11 percent full while Cinemalaya held between 32 and 44.

How this was counted, and what is missing. Gateway is the hardest venue to capture and I hold 129 of its 196 shows.

And to plug my website that made all of this data possible: takilya.ph has showtimes from every major cinema chain in one place, along with reviews of the cinemas themselves. If you watched something recently, you can leave a review of the room, including the screen, sound, and seats. It helps the next person decide where to watch a film, or where not to! Feedback and cinema reviews are welcome!

How was your Cinemalaya 22 experience? Which film do you think deserves a wider release?

Hi everyone! I've been working on this project for a few months now and I'm happy to finally share it with you guys.

https://takilya.ph/ is a place to find showtimes and cinema reviews across the Philippines. For those unfamiliar, takilya is tagalog for box office.

I've been a longtime member of FilmClubPH, and some of the top posts we get are "where should I watch this film?", "what's the best theater to watch this in?", and so on. The answers are gold, but they get buried - a month later, someone asks the same thing because nobody digs through old threads.

So I built an all-in-one place for cinema reviews: every chain, branch, and theater, ranked on a 5-star system. You can review with your own account or anonymously!

https://preview.redd.it/vb1x7ial9xih1.png?width=1538&format=png&auto=webp&s=b54bfa69cbdde7e7e1ccefe1936a84fb66113544

To start it off, I collated posts and comments from this subreddit where people shared their cinema experiences and turned them into a review page - every entry links back to the exact original comment or post, so the credit stays with the author. If you've ever posted a cinema review here, you just might find your name! And if you'd rather not be included, message me, and I'll take it down right away.

https://preview.redd.it/xfcfuijabxih1.png?width=841&format=png&auto=webp&s=ceb938f5daaef0cb34378ace39d2d8656559d469

I highly encourage everyone to review a cinema, good experience or bad. It will be really helpful so we can build on our community and help people who want to know which theaters are actually worth their money!

The other big feature: schedules and showtimes from the largest chains in the Philippines, all in one place. Save your preferred cinemas and theaters, find the closest ones, and get recommended cinemas for specific films. For some of the largest chains, you can even check seat occupancy, so you know if it's worth booking without opening their actual website! Booking links go straight to each chain's own page - I don't sell tickets or take a cut.

https://preview.redd.it/2i9bg8w0axih1.png?width=855&format=png&auto=webp&s=4d38e9b2bf75b35ab5432ba9cc638167715f5742

https://preview.redd.it/kg0n87uhbxih1.png?width=829&format=png&auto=webp&s=7ef63455871229e354674dd34fd0af44ba4c8a4e

And the big one I'm working toward: box office tracking. Once the data gets stable enough, I want to publish a weekly or monthly write-up on how films are doing in Philippine cinemas. It has to live up to the name takilya after all! (example analytics I've posted in the past few weeks below)
https://www.reddit.com/r/FilmClubPH/s/Lb2a0A4NAE
https://www.reddit.com/r/FilmClubPH/s/qQ8PLDgheu

The website is completely ad-free, no bloat, independently developed, and a passion project.

I'm actively maintaining and developing this! Some upcoming features: photo support per cinema and more UI improvements. Your feedback is appreciated - there's a feedback button right on the bottom right of the site.

If you find the site useful, the best way to support it is to leave a review after your next cinema trip and share it with your friends, family, and fellow redditors. The more of us reviewing, the better it gets for everyone!

https://preview.redd.it/zu5l2efwaxih1.png?width=395&format=png&auto=webp&s=2e9c6dfa596635784ba1cc480b1e40a415601cf6

Lastly, a big thank you to the fellow redditor and my friends who beta-tested the app and contributed to the review page! And to the many independent PH film projects that got made around the same time - each has its own feature set, so show some love to them as well: sinegang.com, cineph.com, fomo.ph

Happy to share more in the comments! Drop your questions and suggestions.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day sold 1,823,990 tickets in the Philippines over its first five days, worth PHP 582.1M ($9.50M). Box Office Mojo estimates the same window at around PHP 570M, so two separate methods land in nearly the same place. I got my figure by reading public booking pages before showtime and counting the seats that disappeared, across 9,641 screenings.

Below, I break down how Filipinos buy tickets, which cinemas filled up, and how much we love Spidey!

Five days, all played out. PHP 582.1M at published prices, which lands 2.2% above Box Office Mojo's estimate for the same window by an entirely separate route.

Thursday fell 21.4% below opening day, the only drop of the run. It then climbed every single day, and Sunday finished 126% above Thursday.

On a working day only the late shows fill up. Friday ran from 23% fullin the morning to 84% at night; by Sunday the whole day was busy, from breakfast to midnight.

Midweek was decided after work: 38% of Thursday's tickets were bought in the last three hours before the lights went down. By Saturday that had dropped to 16%. The weekend was planned days ahead.

Every hour of the week, by how many seats went in it. Buying wakes at ten, peaks at eleven, and dies after nine at night. Busiest single hour of the week: 26,801 seats between 11AM and noon on Saturday.

Each line is one playing day filling up. Watch them climb over each other: on Friday night the country was buying Friday and Sunday tickets at the same time, and Sunday passed every other day in one afternoon.

365 screenings sold out on opening day. By Sunday it was 974, nearly one in every two shows in the country. 2,788 sellouts across the five days.

On the quietest day of the run the ordinary screens sat at 42% full while the premium screens held 74%. By Sunday premium was 99% full at PHP 519 a seat against PHP 368 for a standard one.

Roughly nine of every ten cinema tickets sold in the country were for this film. It also lifted the film next door: The Odyssey went from one seat in seven to better than one in three.

Now the twenty busiest single rooms. Look at SM Seaside City Cebu's Centerstage: 713 seats on Wednesday and 227 on Thursday, then 3,200 and 3,300 on Saturday and Sunday. The country's biggest houses barely open midweek, then get thrown at the weekend.

https://preview.redd.it/s5yu4layhtgh1.png?width=2700&format=png&auto=webp&s=bef593209e28c23a3ce5bfec725a9d387d81f499

Tracked cinema seat maps nationwide and applied each screening's listed ticket price.

Saturday is estimated at PHP166.6M ($2.72M), bringing the total through Saturday to PHP454.2M ($7.42M). Based on 219,620 seats already booked for Sunday by midnight and Saturday's same-day sales pattern, the five-day opening is projected at PHP611.9M ($9.99M).

That would place it behind Endgame at PHP937.5M and Infinity War at PHP650.1M among the biggest Philippine five-day openings!

Note: USD converted at PHP61.25. Wednesday is Columbia's reported gross; Thursday through Sunday are my estimates.