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As it turns out, audiences love a Christopher Nolan movie that leans into the epic imagery of heroes and monsters, and all with grand emotional stakes. Who would have guessed otherwise?
Apparently quite a few folks, as you might have noticed if you spent any significant time on social media and video sharing apps like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and especially X, the latter of which is owned by the richest man in the world. Indeed, in one week alone last May, Elon Musk posted 60 times about his vocal misgivings for the then upcoming Nolan adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey. Even so, this apprehension clearly hasn’t trickled down to regular moviegoers.
This past weekend’s release of The Odyssey grossed an estimated $124.5 million across three days—plus Thursday night previews—well above what prognosticators last week were suggesting would open around $105 million. Furthermore, it is the highest domestic start of the year for a live-action movie, falling only behind Toy Story 5 ($159.7 million) and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ($131.7 million). It’s also something of a coup for Nolan, marking the highest domestic opening of his career that is neither a sequel or a Batman movie. (His biggest openings remain The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises with $158.4 million and $160.9 million, respectively.) And it is also his biggest global release, period, hitting $264.1 million across the weekend.
Domestically these might not be Batman numbers, but the fact The Odyssey is outpacing what became leggy and beloved hits like Inception, Interstellar, and Oppenheimer, the latter of which benefitted greatly from being one-half of the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon in 2023, and Odyssey is doing that while still being a sprawling three-hour and R-rated epic, is a testament to Nolan’s popularity. In a summer when traditional franchise films appear to be faltering, the box office is still growing and healthy because, in part, of audience excitement for ambitious filmmakers who can turn their name recognition into something of a brand. Odyssey’s “A” CinemaScore also suggests we might be headed toward another leggy run, similar to Oppenheimer dropping only 43.4 percent in its second weekend after receiving an “A” CinemaScore.
The implications of Odyssey’s success are tantalizing in a few ways. The first is of course being a welcome reminder that social media noise is often more a tempest in a teacup than the zeitgeist-defining battleground the culture warriors imagine. Plenty of social media malcontents have made a penny off manipulating YouTube, X, TikTok, and other algorithms by feeding negative content and amplifying racially-tinged toxicity over the casting of Black actors in Odyssey, as well as trans actor Elliot Page in the role of a Greek soldier, and yet for all the rage-filled engagement it generates on the internet, the online vitriol likely has no more to do with general audience attitudes than similar campaigns targeting flops in genres that audiences may have become exhausted by.
In other words, the only thing online echo chambers seething over Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o being cast as Helen of Troy achieved appears to be the further feeding of ad revenues for certain social media personalities.
Beyond the culture war nonsense, The Odyssey’s success is not surprising but it’s still illuminating. As we wrote last week, the box office has seen four or five disappointments from massively marketed franchise (or intended to be franchise) films. Several were new installments in storied brands with decades-long cinematic history, others were new live-action remakes in a franchise that saw its last installment gross more than $1 billion not even two years ago.
Despite these underperformances, the general sentiment around Hollywood, and definitely among theater owners, is that this has so far been a solid year at the movies. That’s because box office on the whole is up from this time last year, as is attendance. It just appears to be what audiences are more keen to see is shifting. There remains plenty of room for the big splashy blockbuster epic. But unlike Moana, Masters of the Universe, or Supergirl, the selling point of Odyssey isn’t the intellectual property (although the fact most audiences around the world should have heard of Homer’s 2,800-year-old epic at some point in their lives certainly helps); it’s that the audience trusts in the filmmaker and the way he and Universal Pictures were able to leverage that in the marketing campaign.
As with Ryan Coogler’s unapologetically film-nerdy marketing push to explain the appeal of IMAX 70mm projection last year during Sinners’ rollout, or Phil Lord and Chris Miller doing something similar for Project Hail Mary this spring, the fact Nolan is the first filmmaker in history to shoot an entire narrative film with 65mm IMAX cameras became one of The Odyssey’s biggest assets. Granted, Nolan was the original pioneer of using IMAX photography in Hollywood productions, beginning with The Dark Knight almost 20 years ago, but at that time it was more of a novelty adored by cinephiles and Nolan’s most ardent fans. Eighteen years later, it’s one of the biggest selling points, one that might matter more than shared universe interconnectivity.
The film’s success also suggests movie stars continue to be an added value, if not the greatest selling point, considering The Odyssey’s cast, like Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies, is absolutely stacked with familiar and recognizable faces. From the top of the call sheet performers like Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, and Tom Holland, all the way down to the supporting ensemble including Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal, John Leguizamo, Mia Goth, and Robert Pattinson among its ranks, The Odyssey seemed to benefit from the kind of retro all-star cast trick that ironically was a mainstay of the type of 1950s sword and sandal epics Nolan seemed to be partially channeling here.
It is not a small irony that one of the biggest hits of the year is relying on larger format presentations and starry ensemble casts like the Hollywood of 70 years ago. But when coupled with the success this summer of original, young-skewing horror movies like Obsession and Backrooms, as well as the return of adult-leaning sci-fi movies like Hail Mary and even the middle-aged-skewing comedy of Devil Wears Prada 2, it does create a glimpse into the future of what might be working.
And when it comes to selling tickets, winning the online grifters and malcontents seems fairly irrelevant. Still.
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