By Molly Schuetz, Anna Boyne and Zainab Haji

 

Christopher Nolan’s star-studded interpretation of Homer’s 3,000-year-old epic poem The Odyssey is drawing audiences in numbers that put Hollywood on track for its strongest year since 2019.

 

The Odyssey, the first film to be shot entirely on Imax Corp. cameras, brought in $264.1 million globally in its opening weekend, surpassing expectations in North America and around the world. Laudatory reviews from critics and audiences helped push the film to become the biggest opening for any live-action movie this year and Comcast Corp.’s Universal Pictures’ highest weekend launch of all time for an R-rated movie, according to brokerage firm Roth.

 
 

Nolan, a 55-year-old British American, is one of the few Hollywood directors today that can draw in crowds for a film that isn’t based on a comic book character, video game franchise or beloved animated classic. His films have raked in more than $6 billion in ticket sales since his breakthrough Memento in 2000, despite their often complex nonlinear narratives. He’s won scores of recent accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Picture for 2023’s Oppenheimer. Through films from Interstellar to The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan has also earned the audience’s trust and now they’re proving eager to turn out for just about anything he makes. 

 

“The appetite from the audience has been unprecedented,” Mark Cutmore, head of commercial experiences at the Science Museum Group, said in an interview. “I have been bowled over by how many people want to come see it with us.” London’s Science Museum is one of only three theaters in the UK that’s showing the film in the Imax 70mm format, which is favored by cinephiles because it provides the highest resolution on the largest screen available. 

 

The Ronson Theatre at the Science Museum, which seats 400, offered tickets for 70 screenings between the launch date last Friday and the end of August and is currently completely booked up. Cutmore said it’s “quite unusual” for the theater to have sold out of all of those right at the beginning. On Friday Cutmore added additional screenings and is looking to add even more. “But there are only so many hours in the day,” he added. Another limiting factor is that the theaters that show 70mm Imax films require specially skilled technicians to operate the screenings and those people are also in short supply.

 

The Odyssey stars Matt Damon in the title role of Odysseus, who is seeking to make his way home to the kingdom of Ithaca after the Trojan War. His journey isn’t easy. Along the way he battles a terrifying cyclops, outwits the cunningly gruesome Circe, navigates furious storms at sea and tries to regain his memory on a breathtakingly beautiful desert island, where he is held captive by the equally beautiful Calypso. The all-star cast included Anne Hathaway as Odysseus’ wife Penelope, Tom Holland as their son Telemachus, Charlize Theron as Calypso and Zendaya as Athena. 

 

The release follows a multimillion-dollar promotional campaign that included red carpet premieres in London, Paris, New York and Mumbai — the first-ever Nolan film premiere in India. Produced by Syncopy Inc. — the company Nolan runs with his wife Emma Thomas — The Odyssey  cost roughly $250 million to make. Universal Pictures has backed it with the kind of confidence studios once only reserved for surefire box office draws such as Batman, Harry Potter or Jurassic Park.

 

Critics and moviegoers both gave high praise for The Odyssey. It has a 95 per cent critics approval rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, which cites the film’s “majestic sweep” and “sterling work by its colossal ensemble.” Audiences gave the film a 97 per cent approval score. 

 

Saruul Bat, 25 is planning on seeing the film three times in less than a week. She saw it in Friday’s debut at the British Film Institute in London, watched it again on Monday and has tickets for Wednesday as well. She was able to get Friday’s ticket by reserving right when they were released several months ago at 1:00 a.m., she said.

 

Bat is a self-described “Nolan superfan.” She saw Oppenheimer “like eight times.” She always goes to the BFI because she grew up watching Imax documentaries there. “It’s bigger, everything’s just better,” she said.

 

Nolan’s success has effectively inverted the modern Hollywood studio model, which overwhelmingly relies on familiar characters such as superheroes, dinosaurs, spies and toy brands that offer audiences instant recognition in a crowded entertainment landscape and help reduce financial risk. Directors have generally remained secondary to characters such as Harry Potter or Elsa, with Nolan and a select few others as exceptions. His name signals quality and originality, as well as a crucial poster topping that’s redolent of Steven Spielberg after the success of Jaws, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Jurassic Park, or the auteur brand Quentin Tarantino curated during the independent cinema boom of the 1990s.

 

“It starts with Chris,” Jim Orr, president of domestic distribution at Universal Pictures, said in an interview. “He creates these incredibly immersive theatrical events that people want to experience together.”

 

The audience for The Odyssey skewed slightly more male (59 per cent) and older (76 per cent were at least 25 years old) than the typical big summer film, according to data provided by Universal.

 

Imax began offering tickets to The Odyssey one year in advance and tickets are sold out for the foreseeable future at many theaters in New York and elsewhere. There are only 41 theaters in the world, including 25 in the US, that are equipped to show the movie in the Imax 70mm format. 

 

London’s Science Museum has screened many other Nolan films in 70mm, including Oppenheimer, Interstellar and Dunkirk. “We know there’s demand,” Cutmore said. “It wasn’t a surprise.” But by the time the theater had opened the doors on Friday, it had already sold more tickets to The Odyssey than for the entire run of Oppenheimer, he noted.

 

The Odyssey brought in $51.8 million for Imax, a record-breaking opening weekend for the company for the first film that was entirely shot with Imax 70mm film cameras. With an average of $66,000 per screen in North America, it was the second-highest ever for Imax behind only Star Wars: The Force Awakens, back in 2015, according to the brokerage firm Roth. The Odyssey also surpassed Nolan’s last feature, Oppenheimer, which debuted on Imax screens in July 2023 with a $51,300 per screen average.

 

“The Odyssey is among a rarified group of instant classic blockbusters in Imax history that fully leverage our platform; as bullish as we are on its success, our experience tells us that even we don’t know how this movie will grow our brand and business,” Imax Chief Executive Officer Rich Gelfond said in a statement. 

 

The movie was also a boon for AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., the largest theatrical exhibitor in the US and around the world. The company said more than 4.3 million moviegoers attended AMC theaters in the US and Odeon cinemas internationally from Thursday through Sunday, led by The Odyssey.

 

“For the past several days, The Odyssey has been at the center of the pop culture conversation across both the United States and Europe, once again demonstrating how deeply movie theaters are woven into the fabric of society,” Adam Aron, chief executive officer of AMC Entertainment, said in a statement on Monday.

 

AMC shares were up 24 per cent Monday in New York after the company reported stronger than expected profits for the second quarter. That brought its gains for the year to 55 per cent. 

 

Demand was so robust that some premium format auditoriums operated continuously throughout the weekend, with showtimes extending in some AMC theaters in the US for more than 85 consecutive hours, the company said. Some flagship locations such as AMC Lincoln Square 13 in New York (which offers the 70mm Imax format), AMC Metreon 16 in San Francisco, operated around the clock Thursday morning through Sunday night.

 

“It’s really difficult to get Imax tickets,” said Zackary Manolson, 23, who resorted to seeing The Odyssey in standard format at the Vue in Leicester Square in London. “They’re booked up until late August, so I thought that I’d just watch it not in Imax and be able to see it sooner.”

 

The Odyssey is the second film in the past five weeks to have a domestic opening weekend well above $100 million, and the eighth film since late March to open above $75 million domestically, according to AMC. 

 

Other movies that have surpassed expectations in recent months include Michael, the musical biopic about the legendary but controversial singer superstar from Lionsgate Studios Corp., that has surpassed $1 billion at the global box office, and an unexpected “horror renaissance,” with films such as Obsession and Backrooms, from from YouTube creators trouncing the latest superhero and Star Wars movies.

 

The emerging trend shows that audiences will turn out for bold, original storytelling and premium formats like Imax. 

 

And while Nolan deserves “full credit” for celebrating the theatrical experience as something that’s important, he isn’t alone now among directors who can draw people in, the Science Museum’s Cutmore said. His theater will be showing Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part 3 on 70 mm and people are already on a waitlist to be able to buy tickets when that film goes on sale. The opening is scheduled for Dec. 18. Other directors that are able to draw huge crowds include Ryan Coogler, whose 2025 film Sinners won four Academy Awards including for best original screenplay, and Paul Thomas Anderson, who directed One Battle After Another, also a big Oscar winner.

 

As for box office trends, AMC noted that it expects this year to be the strongest post-pandemic year, both domestically and globally. Other potential box-office draws include Spider-Man: Brand New Day coming July 31 and Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars, a post-apocalyptic thriller starring Jacob Elordi coming in August.

 

The Odyssey continues its global run in Imax for at least three weeks, expanding into South Korea, China and Japan, according to the company. The Odyssey will play in Imax 70mm locations for at least five weeks, with many of those locations already recording sellouts.

 

Leo Wilmot traveled more than an hour from his home in Southampton to watch the film in London at the British Film Institute, which is showing The Odyssey in Imax 70mm. He said he was “very excited” to see the first ever movie filmed entirely in Imax. “It’s just insane,” he said. “And obviously, Christopher Nolan, I’m a big fan of of his movies, so seeing it in Imax for the first time in the biggest screen, it’s just going to be an experience.”