If your weekend plans involve getting the kids out of the house, giving yourself a break from the usual routine, or just doing something a bit unexpected, ODEON Blanchardstown might have exactly what you need this Saturday and Sunday.
To mark National Cinema Weekend, ODEON Blanchardstown is doing something genuinely wild: keeping its doors open around the clock across the entire weekend. We're talking 109 screenings in total, from 9am on Saturday 5th September right through the night and on until Sunday evening, with the last showing kicking off at 9.30pm on Sunday 6th September. That's a lot of popcorn.
And here's the bit that'll make you sit up: every single ticket is just €4. That includes IMAX and iSense screenings. For a family of four, you're looking at a €16 cinema trip. When did that last happen?
What's on through the night?
ODEON has added 24 overnight screenings to its usual weekend programme, and the line-up is genuinely varied. The Odyssey will screen in IMAX at 1.20am and again at 5.20am, if you fancy something epic at an hour when most of Ireland is fast asleep. Horror fans can catch Insidious at 12.10am, 2.50am or 5.30am. Spider-Man: Brand New Day runs at 12.40am, 2.35am, 4.10am and 6.30am, which honestly sounds perfect for a teenager who insists they're not tired.
The concessions stand will be open throughout the night too, so there's no shortage of nachos or buttered popcorn regardless of what hour you roll in. Cheesy nachos at 3am is a sentence we never thought we'd write, but here we are.
A different kind of night out (or very early morning)
Look, most of us aren't going to book a 2am IMAX screening on a Saturday night. But there's something really appealing about this for all sorts of reasons. If you're a shift worker, a nurse finishing a long hospital run, or someone in hospitality who knocks off at midnight, the idea of catching a film on the way home rather than doom-scrolling until 2am has genuine appeal.
For parents, the €4 ticket price alone makes the daytime and early evening screenings worth jumping on. National Cinema Weekend is one of those rare moments where a proper cinema trip doesn't require a financial rethink. Grab the kids, pick a film, and let someone else do the entertaining for a couple of hours. You've earned it.
ODEON Blanchardstown is well served by public transport too, with the 39A and N4 bus routes running 24-hour services, so getting there at an unusual hour is more straightforward than you might expect.
What the people behind it are saying
Paul Wren, Head of Sales at ODEON Ireland and UK, summed it up well: "We are so excited to welcome movie-goers at all times throughout the weekend. Whether people are finishing a late shift, starting work early or simply fancy watching a film at 3am, we wanted to give audiences as much choice as possible, to celebrate how integral cinema is to our daily lives."
Director Denis Villeneuve, who's long been one of cinema's most passionate advocates for the big screen experience, put it beautifully: "Cinema on the big screen is more than a business, it is an art form that brings people together... it's one of the very last artistic, in-person collective experiences we share."
And honestly? He's not wrong. There's something about sitting in a dark room with a bucket of popcorn and a film you've been meaning to see that no streaming service has ever quite managed to replicate.
National Cinema Weekend at ODEON Blanchardstown runs from Saturday 5th to Sunday 6th September, with all tickets priced at €4. For the full schedule and to book, visit odeoncinemas.ie.
