Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Is About to Make Universal Box Office History This Weekend

Christopher Nolan has spent decades earning a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most reliably bankable directors, but even by his own lofty standards, this summer has been something else entirely. His latest epic has spent weeks quietly demolishing box office records, one milestone at a time, without ever really slowing down.

Now, that steady march toward the history books is about to reach a genuinely staggering new peak, one that will place Nolan’s name alongside some of the biggest blockbusters ever released by a major Hollywood studio.

‘The Odyssey’ is crossing the $1.5 billion mark at the global box office this coming weekend, surpassing ‘Furious 7’s’ $1.51 billion total to become Universal’s second-biggest movie of all time. The Homeric epic, starring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, and Tom Holland, has already become Nolan’s highest-grossing film ever, having overtaken 2012’s ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ earlier this month.

According to Deadline, ‘The Odyssey’ had already crossed $1 billion within just three weeks of its July 17 release, powered by strong holds and unusually high demand for premium large-format screenings. The film became the first movie ever shot entirely in IMAX, and its 70mm engagements have proven so popular that many locations remained sold out well into the fall.

Much of the film’s remaining box office potential lies in markets it hadn’t even opened in yet as of its billion-dollar milestone. As reported by Variety, the film’s rollout in South Korea, China, and Japan came weeks after its initial release, meaning a significant chunk of its eventual global total was still on the table even after it crossed a billion dollars domestically and internationally combined.

That international expansion appears to be paying off in a major way, with Imax China reportedly dedicating the vast majority of its nearly 800-screen network specifically to Nolan’s film. Universal’s president of international distribution, Veronika Kwan Vandenberg, credited Nolan’s global filmmaking reputation for the film’s box office trajectory, calling him uniquely suited to bring one of history’s most influential stories to the screen.

The film has also carved out a specific niche as the highest-grossing R-rated movie of the year, surpassing ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’s’ previous record along the way. That achievement is particularly notable given the film’s nearly three-hour runtime and adult-skewing subject matter, categories that don’t typically produce billion-dollar blockbusters with this level of consistency.

Crossing $1.5 billion places ‘The Odyssey’ in genuinely rarefied territory, trailing only ‘Jurassic World’s’ $1.67 billion as Universal’s biggest release of all time before adjusting for inflation. Combined with Sony’s ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day,’ which has also been dominating theaters throughout the same stretch, this summer has produced one of the strongest theatrical box office seasons Hollywood has seen since before the pandemic.

Given how much runway ‘The Odyssey’ still has left in additional territories, and with IMAX screens remaining in high demand months after release, there’s a real chance this weekend’s milestone won’t be the film’s last major record before its theatrical run finally winds down.

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