In another case of “the internet is not real life,” Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” opened above expectations last weekend, dominating the box office with a massive $264 million global launch. This despite a months-long campaign from far right individuals on social media lamenting Nolan’s decision to cast Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy (a character who is in the film for all of three minutes) and Elliot Page as Achilles (Page did not, in fact, play Achilles).
The conservative backlash intensified when Elon Musk endorsed complaints against “The Odyssey” and kept tweeting about how the film was doomed to fail.
And here we are, far from failure.
With an estimated $124.5 million domestic launch, Nolan’s epic is his biggest non-“Dark Knight” opening ever and the biggest opening weekend for an R-rated movie outside of the “It” franchise and the “Deadpool” movies — an impressive feat for a 2,700-year-old piece of IP.
Not only did “The Odyssey” receive critical acclaim, but audiences adored it. The film received an A CinemaScore (a rarity for R-rated films) and sits at a 98% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Even Ben Shapiro liked it! And the IMAX results for the first film ever shot entirely in IMAX film were phenomenal: a whopping 53% of all tickets sold were for premium formats.
So what did we learn? Echo chambers — especially ones controlled by Elon Musk — tend to elevate only the most reaction-grabbing posts. This movement to damage “The Odyssey” was either too tiny to register or didn’t really exist at all.
Credit for the massive success of “The Odyssey” goes to the Universal marketing team as well. While Nolan is arguably the most bankable director working today, this film wasn’t an immediate easy sell. The Comcast flywheel was put into full effect, blanketing podcasts and talk shows with the A-list cast and putting Nolan front and center. The filmmaker even went on Fox and Friends over the weekend to sit opposite an interviewer who was gushing about the film. How about that?
Now, on to the rest as we tackle The Alex theater’s 70mm transformation, what people are actually watching on Netflix, the TIFF lineup and more in this week’s Reel to Real column.
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Box Office: ‘The Odyssey’ Triumphs With $264 Million Global Opening Weekend
Universal/Syncopy’s “The Odyssey” was a tentpole-level gamble on Christopher Nolan’s global popularity, and it paid off huge with an estimated $124.5 million domestic/$264 million global opening weekend amidst critical and audience acclaim.
While the actual totals reported on Monday morning may fluctuate more from these estimates than usual due to global interest in the FIFA World Cup final pulling away moviegoers, those numbers are still set to be around 46% higher than the $180.4 million global launch of Nolan’s 2023 Oscar-winning hit “Oppenheimer,” which finished with $965 million worldwide.
While third-weekend competition from Sony’s “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” should be taken into account, this strong global start and audience scores that include an A on CinemaScore, 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and an 81% “definite recommend” rating on PostTrak, combined with the lack of a major wide release next weekend, all point to a theatrical run with the fuel to clear $1 billion worldwide.
As it stands, “The Odyssey” has passed the 2017 horror film “It” as the highest domestic opening for an R-rated film outside of Marvel’s “Deadpool” trilogy and for a Nolan film outside of his “Dark Knight” trilogy.”
The success of this weekend shows how Christopher Nolan is not just the world’s most popular filmmaker, but has built up a box office draw that rivals the likes of Tom Cruise and Hollywood’s biggest A-list actors. “The Odyssey” has become the highest opening weekend ever for Nolan in 48 countries and for Universal in 11, including India, where the film’s $7.2 million opening is the largest ever for a non-franchise Hollywood production.
And while Imax 70mm, a format with only a few dozen screens worldwide, is the hottest ticket for “The Odyssey,” a staggering 53% of all tickets sold were for premium formats, including digital Imax, Dolby, 35mm, 70mm, and other in-house theater PLFs. Imax alone accounted for 23%, or approximately $28 million, of the film’s domestic grosses with a worldwide Imax total of $51 million, second highest of all time for the format behind only “Avengers: Endgame.”
Taking second is Disney’s struggling remake of “Moana,” which made $19 million domestic and $44 million worldwide to bring its 10-day total to a poor $82.1 million domestic and $178.5 million global. While the film’s decent traction with families as a PG alternative to the R-rated “Odyssey” will push it past the $205 million global total of last year’s bomb “Snow White,” it will still fall well short of $500 million and will require other Disney summer hits like “The Devil Wears Prada 2” and “Toy Story 5” to make up for the theatrical loss. – Jeremy Fuster
The Spotlight
For the first time in 35 years, Glendale’s The Alex theater screened a movie this weekend. Not just any movie but Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” in glorious 70mm. The effort to revamp the theater — where Walt Disney would test screen new shorts and “Going My Way” had its premiere — was a herculean effort accomplished in just two months, and TheWrap’s Jeremy Fuster went to The Alex ahead of “The Odyssey” opening to find out how and why they made it 70mm-ready. We even shot a little featurette on the transformation! Read the full story here.
New Releases
What Are People Watching on Netflix?: Netflix released its data dump for what was watched in the first half of the year, and we’ve got the breakdown. Hint: Genre and animated movies did great.
AMC Theatres Earnings: AMC Theatres reported its highest quarterly revenue ever on this year’s box office rebound.
“Odyssey” Culture Wars: William Bibbiani wrote a searing essay about the silliness behind those “culturally inaccurate” complaints about “The Odyssey.”
Wow: Netflix paid a whopping $587 million in cash for Ben Affleck’s AI company InterPositive.
Looney Tunes Lives: Drew Taylor got the inside scoop on the first theatrical “Looney Tunes” short in 15 years.
TIFF Time: The first lineup of films playing at the Toronto International Film Festival is here.
“Eraser” Revisited: Drew Taylor spoke with director Chuck Russell about his ’90s Arnold Schwarzenegger actioner for its 30th anniversary.
Concession Stand
Paramount’s “Call of Duty” movie, co-written by Taylor Sheridan, will adapt “Modern Warfare.”
But first, Danny McBride will direct Paramount’s “G.I. Joe” movie that he wrote.
Sydney Sweeney will lead a “Sleepy Hollow” revamp for Sony and writer-director Lindsay Anderson Beer.
Netflix snapped up Danny Boyle’s Rupert Murdoch thriller “Ink” ahead of its Venice debut.
James Gray’s “Paper Tiger” will open the New York Film Festival, despite premiering at Cannes.
Warner Bros. delayed “The Batman 2” to February 2028 and pushed J.J. Abrams’ “The Great Beyond” a year from Fall 2026 to Fall 2027.
Streaming Corner
- “Swapped,” the Michael B. Jordan-led Skydance animated film about a Pookoo and a Javan who swap bodies, is on track to be Netflix’s No. 2 most-watched animated film ever after “KPop Demon Hunters.” Animation dominated a lot of Netflix’s most-watched content in the first half of the year.
What I’m Watching
I knew “The Odyssey” would be epic, but I also found the film to be incredibly moving. The third act is a narrative masterstroke, recontextualizing the previous two hours as Christopher Nolan drives home the cost of Odysseus’ journey. Between this and “Oppenheimer,” Nolan is getting increasingly political with his storytelling, and the narrative of “The Odyssey” seems to be in direct dialogue with the world we live in today. As my friend Matt Goldberg wrote, it’s “a story of how the world no longer works when we decide we no longer owe each other anything.”
