‘The Odyssey’ Just Rewrote The Record Books And Left Marvel In The Dust
Christopher Nolan has never been shy about chasing scale, and his adaptation of Homer’s epic poem has turned into the biggest box office story of the summer. Since its July release, ‘The Odyssey’ has spent week after week dominating charts, pulling audiences into IMAX auditoriums for a nearly three hour theatrical experience that many assumed R-rated cinema could no longer sustain.
The film follows Matt Damon as Odysseus battling his way home after years of war, with Anne Hathaway as Penelope and Tom Holland as his son Telemachus holding down Ithaca in his absence. Charlize Theron, Robert Pattinson, Benny Safdie, John Leguizamo and Elliot Page round out a cast built almost entirely from Nolan’s returning collaborators, and the results have paid off in a way even Universal likely did not expect.
According to industry tracker World of Reel, ‘The Odyssey’ has now crossed 1.34 billion dollars worldwide, officially making it the highest grossing R-rated movie of all time. That milestone pushes it past 2024’s ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’, which had previously held the record with 1.33 billion dollars globally, a title Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman’s film had itself claimed from Joaquin Phoenix’s ‘Joker’.
What makes the achievement even more striking is how the two films got there. The Odyssey cost a reported 250 million dollars to produce, a fraction of Deadpool & Wolverine’s combined production and marketing budget of roughly 537 million dollars, meaning Nolan’s film reached profitability on a much shorter runway. The R-rated epic runs two hours and 52 minutes and held the top two spots domestically every day since its July 17 opening, an unusually dominant run for a film without a built-in franchise fanbase.
International audiences carried much of the load. The film’s international performance accounted for well over 60 percent of its total gross, a split that helped it close what once looked like an insurmountable gap with the Marvel sequel. The rollout still had room to grow too, since ‘The Odyssey’ only expanded into mainland China in the middle of August, opening on more than 20,000 screens according to The Week.
Universal has leaned into the film’s crossover success as proof that original, non-franchise storytelling still has a place at the multiplex. Veronika Kwan Vandenberg, President of Distribution at Universal Pictures International, called The Odyssey a global epic that has resonated with audiences everywhere with its massive scope and uncompromising vision in comments shared with Variety. The film has also become the highest grossing Imax release of all time, pulling in 289.3 million dollars in global Imax box office, and it stands as the biggest film of Nolan’s own career, ahead of previous record holder ‘The Dark Knight Rises’.
For a three thousand year old poem to outgross a Marvel team up starring two of the genre’s most beloved characters is the kind of box office twist few would have predicted a year ago. Does ‘The Odyssey’ deserve its new crown over ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’, or does the Merc with a Mouth still hold the more culturally defining R-rated blockbuster?
