Universal and Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' sails to $124.5 million opening

The Universal film adaptation tallied an estimated $124.5 million in its opening weekend as audiences flocked to premium 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's reinvented the superhero genre, captured the zeitgeist with multiple thought-provoking originals, and turned a three-hour biopic into a global blockbuster. He's done it again with the retelling of a 2,700-year-old poem that serves as the foundation of what we recognize as modern storytelling."

IMAX reported nearly $30 million in estimated ticket sales for the weekend, representing around 24% of the domestic opening haul.

Internationally, "The Odyssey" secured $139.6 million, bringing the global weekend total to $264.1 million. IMAX contributed around $22 million, or 15%, to the film's international debut. The film has yet to open in China, Japan and South Korea.

"The Odyssey" is Nolan's third-best domestic opening weekend and highest global opening, according to data from Rentrak.

Around 7.5 million tickets were sold domestically for the film, data from EntTelligence showed. Premium large-format screenings accounted for 45% of those tickets sold, costing an average of $19 a piece. Coveted 70mm screenings accounted for 5% of all tickets sold over the weekend and averaged nearly $22.50.

"This was always going to be a great movie," Rich Gelfond, CEO of IMAX, told CNBC. "It had a great cast, great director and locations it was shot at. But I think what IMAX did was help turn it from a great movie into a massive cultural event on a worldwide basis."

"The Odyssey" is expected to continue to draw moviegoers in the coming weeks. It has limited direct competition until the release of Sony and Marvel's "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" on July 31 and has theatrical exclusivity in IMAX theaters for the next three weeks.

Not to mention, tickets for "The Odyssey," some of which have been on sale since July 2025, have sold out for theaters showing coveted 70 mm screenings of the film. A similar phenomenon was seen in 2023 when Nolan released the Oscar-winning biopic "Oppenheimer."

The director's films have become event cinema, particularly because Nolan uses cutting-edge filming equipment and techniques to capture footage. For "The Odyssey," he used IMAX-branded cameras, and favors practical set locations and effects over computer-generated images. The results are cinematic spectacles that demand to be seen on the biggest screens with the best sound systems.

"Premium screen showtimes, especially IMAX, sell out weeks in advance for Nolan's releases, guaranteeing a long box office runway for 'The Odyssey' as positive word of mouth sets in," Robbins said. "Fans drive hours in many cases just to find auditoriums presenting 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 accommodate demand. The company is extending the film's run in its theaters into a fifth week, with ticket sales for some of those showings already sold out, Gelfond said.

"It's not just the old guard of moviegoers showing up for films like 'The Odyssey' and 'Oppenheimer,'" Robbins said. "Nolan has a rare drawing power among young millennials and Gen Z crowds that are critically important to the continued evolution of the theatrical business."

Half of moviegoers were aged 18 to 34 — a coveted target demographic that cinemas have been trying to recapture since the pandemic.

"Christopher Nolan is one of a handful of movie directors whose name on the marquee is a guarantee for box office success," said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Rentrak. "[His] body of work has endeared him to movie fans and film aficionados around the world. He's truly in a class of his own."

Disclosure: Versant Media is the parent company of CNBC and Fandango.

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