“The Odyssey” has surpassed $700 million at the global box office, becoming the fourth highest-grossing movie of the year after just 12 days in theaters.
Christopher Nolan‘s Greek epic has generated $320.5 million domestically and $407.4 million overseas, bringing worldwide ticket sales to $727.9 million. Hollywood’s top three releases of 2026 are June’s “Toy Story 5” ($1.02 billion) and April’s “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” ($1.001 billion) and “Michael” ($1.001 billion). In the coming week, “The Odyssey” will join those films in the billion-dollar club, a remarkable feat that underscores Nolan’s ability to transform his movies into cultural events.
These ticket sales are all the more impressive considering that “The Odyssey” has yet to open in China, the world’s second-biggest moviegoing market. The country is rolling out the red-carpet treatment for the film, which is expected to land on nearly 800 Imax screens — and across thousands of standard auditoriums on Aug. 14.
Even with outsized competition from Sony and Marvel’s adventure “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” which debuts on Friday and is primed to score one of the biggest openings of all time, “The Odyssey” is expected to remain a force at the box office. It could earn as much as $50 million to $60 million in its third weekend of release, a tally that most adult-skewing dramas would be lucky to earn in their debuts these days.
“The Odyssey” cost $250 million, marking Nolan’s most expensive film to date. It’ll soon be his most commercially successful, too. It’s primed to overtake “The Dark Knight” ($1.008 billion) and 2012’s “The Dark Knight Rises” ($1.08 billion) as the director’s highest-grossing film of all time.
Adapted from Homer’s 3,000-year-old epic poem and starring Matt Damon as the Greek king Odysseus, “The Odyssey” has been a major draw in Imax. As the first feature shot entirely with Imax cameras, it’s been sold out in those formats for weeks. So far, Imax has contributed $140 million of the film’s global ticket sales. It’s the company’s second-fastest title (after “Avengers: Endgame”) to surpass the $100 million mark, having done so in just 10 days.
