Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is off to a great start.
I Universal The film adaptation reached $124.5 million in its opening weekend as audiences flocked to large-format screenings, especially IMAX theaters.
“Death, taxes, and Christopher Nolan,” said Shawn Robbins, director of analytics at Fandango and founder of Box Office Theory. “He reinvented the superhero genre, captured the zeitgeist with thought-provoking originals, and turned a three-hour biopic into a global blockbuster. He did it again with a retelling of a 2,700-year-old poem that serves as the basis for what we see as modern storytelling.”
IMAX reported nearly $30 million in ticket sales over the weekend, representing about 24% of the domestic opening.
Internationally, “The Odyssey” earned $139.6 million, bringing its global weekend total to $264.1 million. IMAX contributed approximately $22 million, or 15%, of the film’s international premiere. The film has yet to open in China, Japan and South Korea.
“Odyssey” is Nolan’s third-best domestic opening weekend and the highest opening worldwide, according to data from Rentrak.
An estimated 7.5 million tickets were sold for the film, data from EnTelligence showed. Large format Premium screenings accounted for 45% of those tickets sold, costing an average of $19 a piece. The coveted 70mm screening accounted for 5% of all ticket sales over the weekend and averaged $22.50.
“This was always going to be a great movie,” Rich Gelfond, CEO of IMAX, told CNBC. “It had a great cast, a great director and great locations. But I think what IMAX did was help take it from a good movie to a major cultural event around the world.”
“Odyssey” is expected to continue to attract moviegoers in the coming weeks. It has limited direct competition until the release of Sony again Marvel’s “Spider-Man: New Product Day” is on July 31 and has a solo theatrical run at IMAX theaters for the next three weeks.
Not to mention that tickets for “The Odyssey,” some of which have been on sale since July 2025, have sold out in theaters showing the film’s coveted 70 mm screening. The same thing happened in 2023 when Nolan released the Oscar-winning biopic “Oppenheimer.”
The director’s films have become event cinema, mainly because Nolan uses sophisticated recording equipment and photography techniques. For “The Odyssey,” he used IMAX-branded cameras, and favors functional locations and effects over computer-generated imagery. The results are cinema spectacles that want to be seen on big screens with the best sound systems.
“Premium screen showtimes, especially IMAX, sell out weeks before Nolan’s release, ensuring a long box office run for ‘The Odyssey’ as word of mouth comes in,” Robbins said. “Fans drive for hours in many cases to find theaters that present the film as close as possible to what Nolan intended.”
IMAX’s Gelfond noted that 42 IMAX locations had screenings between midnight and 3 a.m. over the weekend to meet demand. The company is extending the movie’s run in theaters until a fifth week, as ticket sales for some of those shows have sold out, Gelfond said.
“It’s not just the old guard of moviegoers who watch movies like ‘The Odyssey’ and ‘Oppenheimer,'” Robbins said. “Nolan has the rare ability to draw in the millennial and Gen Z crowds that are so important to the continued growth of the theater business.”
Half of moviegoers were aged 18 to 34 – the target demographic cinemas have been trying to replicate since the pandemic began.
“Christopher Nolan is one of the few film directors whose name is a guaranteed box office success,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of market trends at Rentrak. “[His] his work has endeared him to film fans and film lovers around the world. He’s definitely in a class of his own.”
Disclosure: Versant Media is the parent company of CNBC and Fandango.
