Christopher Nolan and Universal opening weekend
Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is off to an epic start.
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…