After a month in theaters, Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is still sailing at the box office and has now passed the 2024 Marvel movie “Deadpool & Wolverine” to become the highest grossing R-rated film in box office history before inflation adjustment.
“Deadpool” star Ryan Reynolds marked the record with a social media post congratulating Nolan and the “Odyssey” cast and crew with a video splicing footage of Odysseus and his men walking through a forest with footage of Deadpool and Wolverine fighting inside of a sedan.
“The Odyssey” now stands at $1.35 billion worldwide and is on its way to grossing more than $1.6 billion worldwide as it continues its theatrical run with recent releases in China and South Korea and a release in Japan to come in September. If the film passes $1.67 billion, it will pass the unadjusted global total of the 2015 film “Jurassic World” to become Universal’s highest grossing film of all time before inflation.
In all, “The Odyssey” stands as one of only three R-rated films to gross more than $1 billion worldwide, four if you count the inflation-adjusted global total of the 1973 classic “The Exorcist,” which has made $441 million in lifetime grosses and stood as the R rating record holder for 44 years until Andy Muschietti’s “It” passed it in 2017. Along with “Deadpool & Wolverine,” the first R-rated film to cross that threshold before inflation was “Joker” in 2019.
“The Odyssey” has further built Nolan’s status as the most globally popular director working today, with millions of film lovers around the world treating his films as cinematic events regardless of the subject matter. Starring Matt Damon as Odysseus with a cast that includes Tom Holland and Anne Hathaway, “The Odyssey” was marketed with the distinction of being the first film shot entirely with Imax film cameras, creating the desire to see the film on premium and analog formats.
Earlier this month, “The Odyssey” became the highest grossing film in Imax history, becoming the first film to gross more than $300 million worldwide in the format. More than $40 million of that total has come from 41 theaters showing the film on Imax 70mm, with screenings at those theaters still selling out through mid-September.
