Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey starts out epic.
Universal The film adaptation grossed an estimated $124.5 million in its opening weekend as audiences flocked to premium wide-screen screenings, especially IMAX theaters.
“Death, taxes and Christopher Nolan,” said Sean Robbins, chief analytics officer at Fandango and founder of Box Office Theory. “He reinvented the superhero genre, captured the zeitgeist with a slew of thought-provoking originals, and turned a three-hour biopic into a global blockbuster. He’s done it again, retelling a 2,700-year-old poem that serves as the basis for what we think of as modern storytelling.”
IMAX said it expected ticket sales for the weekend to be about $30 million, representing about 24% of total domestic ticket sales.
Internationally, The Odyssey grossed $139.6 million, bringing its weekend total to $264.1 million. IMAX contributed about $22 million, or 15%, to the film’s international debut. The film has not yet been released in China, Japan or South Korea.
According to Rentrak, The Odyssey is Nolan’s third-best domestic opening and the highest worldwide.
The film sold approximately 7.5 million tickets domestically, according to EntTelligence. Premium widescreen screenings accounted for 45% of ticket sales and averaged $19 per ticket. The coveted 70mm screenings accounted for 5% of all tickets sold over the weekend and averaged nearly $22.50.
“It’s always going to be a great movie,” Rich Gelfond, IMAX’s CEO, told CNBC. “It had a great cast, great director and great locations. But I think IMAX helped transform it from a great film to a massive cultural event on a global scale.”
The Odyssey is expected to continue to attract moviegoers in the coming weeks. He limited direct competition to release Sony And Marvel Spider-Man: Brand New Day will be released on July 31 and will be exclusively shown in IMAX theaters over 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 70mm screenings of the film. A similar phenomenon was observed in 2023 when Nolan released the Oscar-winning biopic Oppenheimer.
The director’s films have become cinematic events, in part because Nolan uses advanced filming equipment and techniques to film. For The Odyssey, he used IMAX cameras and favored practical locations and effects over computer-generated imagery. The result is cinematic spectacle that demands to be viewed on the biggest screens with the best sound systems.
“Nolan’s premieres, especially in IMAX, sell out weeks in advance, ensuring Odyssey will continue to have a long run at the box office as positive reviews emerge,” Robbins said. “In many cases, fans will travel for hours just to find venues that will present the film as closely as possible to what Nolan intended.”
IMAX’s Gelfond noted that 42 IMAX locations held screenings from midnight to 3 a.m. over the weekend to meet demand. According to Gelfond, the company is extending the film’s run in its theaters for a fifth week, with some of those showings already sold out.
“It’s not just the old guard of moviegoers who come to see films like ‘The Odyssey’ and ‘Oppenheimer,’” Robbins said. “Nolan has the rare ability to attract young millennials and Gen Z, who are critical to the continued growth of the theatrical business.”
Half of moviegoers were between the ages of 18 and 34, a coveted target group that movie theaters are trying to win back after the pandemic.
“Christopher Nolan is one of the few filmmakers whose name on the poster is a guarantee of box office success,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of market trends at Rentrak. “(His) work has brought him to the attention of cinephiles and movie fans around the world. He truly belongs in a class of his own.”
Disclosure: Versant Media is the parent company of CNBC and Fandango.