‘The Odyssey’ dominates global box office with $264 million opening weekend
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is already shaping up to be the biggest film of the year at the global box office, following a $264 million opening weekend.
The anticipation that has been building for The Odyssey for more than 12 months finally came to an end on July 17th when it arrived in cinemas, and the public has come out in their droves to see Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic.
Globally, it took home $264 million, with the United States making up a large chunk of the pie, securing a $124.5 million opening weekend. Only Toy Story 5 and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie have had bigger starts at the box office in 2026.
Universal had previously aimed for a $100 million opening weekend in the US, which was surpassed with ease by The Odyssey.
For Nolan, the huge opening weekend for The Odyssey is greater than anything he has achieved since The Dark Knight Rises in 2012, even surpassing Oppenheimer, which ended up generating almost a billion at the global box office.
Meanwhile, in the UK and Ireland, The Odyssey got off to a flying start, too, securing £12.9 million in the territories.
Intriguingly, per The Guardian, half of the film’s American audience were aged between 18 to 34, while 75 per cent of audience members were over 25. Men also accounted for 56 per cent of the ticket-buying demographic in the United States.
This backs up comments Nolan recently made to the BBC about the key to success at the cinema is getting young people through the doors, stating, “I mean, our biggest segment of viewers who are coming to the movies is young people in their 20s, and it always has been.”
The Odyssey director added, “So, I think ever since the 1950s, when television came along, there’s been this tendency in this media to always proclaim, you know, the death of movies and everything.”
In a glowing five-star review, Far Out wrote of Nolan’s latest picture, “The Odyssey is the film event of the year because it realises Nolan’s ambition of making cinema that needs to be experienced, and not just consumed. This is a story that can’t exactly be ‘spoiled’, but the visualisation, thematic analysis, and emotional calculations inherent to the filmmaker’s interpretation justify another retelling.”
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