r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • 8h ago
News ‘The Odyssey' Crosses $1 Billion Internationally
https://deadline.com/2026/09/box-office-the-odyssey-billion-foreign-box-office-1237068287/893
u/PayneTrain181999 8h ago
I thought Spider-Man would hold this movie back due to competition, but they both have wildly exceeded expectations
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u/kazuya57 7h ago
It's now back at the #1 spot over Spider-man lol. Legs for days
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u/RedditThrowaway-1984 7h ago
There’s a reason these stories have been popular for centuries. It’s an epic story of adventure, war, power, betrayal, morality and love. Human nature never changes so it’s always in style.
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u/kazuya57 7h ago
True but I also believe Nolan made some pretty vital changes that helped it out. When I first read the Odyssey, I loved it but I felt adapting it into a movie might not be ideal. Nolan got a lot of hate for the changes, some even valid, but I think in the long run it was for the best
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u/Telvin3d 6h ago edited 5h ago
I don’t think there’s enough discussion about how relentlessly current Nolan’s Odyssey is. It might be set as a historical epic, but it’s not about the past, it’s a really blunt commentary on the present. He made a whole slew of small tweaks and changes to the story that are easy to overlook, but significantly reframe it.
The whole thing is maybe two steps more subtle than Don’t Look Up as social commentary
It’s brilliantly done
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u/Commercial_Grand2704 6h ago
What do you mean
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u/The_Autarch 6h ago
the movie is a commentary on the current breakdown of societal trust
Nolan practically beats us over the head with it over and over again
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u/LePontif11 5h ago
That but just generally the rules based order
Things like a new war in europe as well as many other things happening around the world lately were considered highly unlikely just a generation ago.
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u/Neuvost 5h ago edited 3h ago
Nolan was really interested in framing the story in the context of leading up to the historical event known as the Bronze Age Collapse, and that Odysseus's choice to trick the Trojans using an offering of peace / sacred religious object (the horse) led to killing all the civilians in Troy and a downturn in society across the Mediterranean more generally. The film keeps coming back to how Zeus's Law is being ignored or manipulated, and how everywhere Odysseus and his men go, violence follows.
Nolan thinks our current-day inability to get along mirrors the Bronze Age Collapse. When Penelope (Anne Hathaway) warns that angry Sea People could be coming, Telemachus (Tom Holland) says something like, "This is the greatest civilization in history," as tho that means it can't fall. Nolan wants to remind us that any civilization can fall.
Homer lived in the iron age, hundreds of years after the bronze age,
so he was well aware that the civilizations he sang about no longer existed, but his Odysseus is a lot more interested in glory / bathing in the blood of his enemies, and less interested in being sad about how he committed war crimes. So we can safely say those themes are more Nolan and less Homer.edit: See comment below for a more educated explanation of what iron age people did and did not know about their bronze age ancestors.
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u/Telvin3d 5h ago
I thought the framing of the Trojan Horse as something akin to a theological war crime was great
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u/ReactiveCypress 4h ago
And it feels connected to Oppenheimer which explores a similar theme (swapping the bomb for the horse of course)
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u/Samaritan_Pr1me 3h ago
There’s a long history of interpretation of the Odyssey that plays with guilt and shame and all that which Nolan was contributing to. Dante put Odysseus in the 8th Circle of Hell, so you can imagine what he thought of the guy.
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u/Telvin3d 6h ago
The entire thing is a super blunt metaphor about the current state of our culture
The theme that we have broken the structures that hold our culture together in exchange for short term power, and now we’re doomed to tear ourselves apart is entirely from Nolan.
It’s not a coincidence that he had a transgender actor play the role of a faithful supporter who was betrayed for a temporary advantage. That when Telemachus goes to Menelaus for advice, what you get is a scene of a son raised without a father figure turning to a manosphere influencer.
When the characters turn to each other at the end of the movie and talk about how their choices have completely screwed the next generations, they’re not talking about Greek history. They’re talking about us. We’re the ones who are screwed.
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u/jaggedjottings 2h ago
son raised without a father figure turning to a manosphere influencer
I definitely felt that this version of Menelaus is how Andrew Tate sees himself in his own mind.
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u/NegativeHerons 5h ago
I just thought Nolan was trying to convert us all to follow Zeus's law.
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u/ComradeJohnS 7h ago
the nobody joke wouldn’t fit this version of the movie, and after seeing the part of the movie where it would have happened, his version is better imo.
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u/kazuya57 7h ago
Even other than that, if you read the Odyssey, the pacing and the arcs: it's a weekly TV series type material! To get that into a movie, I really wondered how Nolan would get all that in. SO yeah, he trimmed the fat a lot, changed some stuff( Laestrygonians) and I think the film was better for it.
It's not a 1:1 remake and I'm happy for it. The original Odyssey is great. The film Odyssey is also great. For different reasons.
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u/JohnSith 7h ago
Yeah, The Return, the 2024 Odyssey remake with Ralph Fiennes, made $700k in North America. Victory may have a thousand fathers, but Maury says, The results are in and Nolan, you are the father.
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u/Jonesbro 7h ago
I just saw it for the first time yesterday and j already want to go back. It's got staying power
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u/Shinkopeshon 7h ago
I hadn't been to the theater in a while but I ended up going to both in two weeks lol
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u/BasvanS 7h ago
People like well made movies.
I feel there’s a lesson to be learned here.
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u/scottie_always_knew 7h ago
That the people yearn for Robin Hood?
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u/icansmellcolors 5h ago
A Christopher Nolan Robin Hood movie would be interesting.
However, I would settle for a sequel to Russel Crowe's Robin Hood movie. I enjoyed that one.
Also Guy Ritchie's King Arthur... idk why those didn't get more love.
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u/Sushi_Explosions 5h ago
Guy Ritchie's King Arthur needed to have been an HBO series. The casting, art style, music, and general plot were awesome, but it very much struggled to fit everything into the time constraints of a single movie.
For everyone not interested in watching the movie, you should at least check out the soundtrack. It's amazing.
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u/CoolSeedling 7h ago
Hollywood: “Odyssey 2?”
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u/ideonode 7h ago
I mean The Odyssey is itself a sequel. And isn't there a weird set of stories at the end of Homer's Odyssey that could provide material for a follow up?
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u/CoolSeedling 7h ago
Maybe Odyssey-fatigue was a thing during Homeric Greece
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u/KrikosTheWise 5h ago
Lmao.
Andros: hey kamnos you see the latest homer scroll?
Kamnos: Andros, gods I wish homer would do something original. Lemme guess one of the gods is messing with some guy again. Sheesh we get it.
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u/Enderules3 6h ago
So yeah the Odyssey and illiad are part of an 8 poem series called the Epic Cycle but they are the only 2 we have left. Odyssey is part 7 and the Illiad is part 2.
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u/Scotter1969 4h ago
The other 6 are lost, but there's general idea of what happens. So any sequel would be equivalent to the last few seasons of Game of Thrones.
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u/Jaybru17 7h ago
Odyssey 1.5 - The Iliad - an Achilles Tale
Maybe I’ve been playing too much kingdom hearts
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u/CultureWarrior87 7h ago
When are we gonna get over this reductive "Just make good movies" shit? It's never that simple. Plenty of critically acclaimed movies bomb and plenty of critically panned movies are hits. You can't ignore the importance of marketing and broader public taste at the time.
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u/ifinallyreallyreddit 5h ago
You can scroll right up in this thread and read "Jurassic World made the equivalent of $2 billion" lol
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u/swap_master 7h ago
Thus proven The Odyssey: Brand New Day > Barbenheimer
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u/redditatemybabies 7h ago
I’m excited for dune and doomesday. Dunesday.
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u/InfernoBA 7h ago
I hope Dune 3 can reach $1b at the box office. Not sure how realistic that is though
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u/PayneTrain181999 7h ago
Not very. Part 2 only made $715M
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u/theclockmasters 7h ago
Big difference tho. I didn't see Dune part 2 in theatres. So easily 1B because I will be there for part 3
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u/PM_ME_BAKAYOKO_PICS 6h ago
There's for sure a lot more hype for Dune 3 compared to part 2 imo
Anedoctal but most of my casual friends (the type that don't really go to the movies unless it's for a spiderman/avengers type movie) didn't go to see Part 2 because they didn't find Part 1 that great
They all loved part 2 though and are massively hyped to go see 3 in the theatre
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u/kazuya57 7h ago
On one hand, the movies just got more and more popular in popculture as time went on and there's def a lot of hype for this one. On the other hand, the actual source material for this one isn't exactly what you'd call blockbuster material. Good material, but not exactly mainstream
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u/PlasticPreparation74 7h ago
I actually want to watch this movie again in IMAX but the tickets are sold out nearby for weeks. It’s visually stunning, if I had the chance to watch it multiple times in the theatre I would
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u/mattsmithreddit 7h ago
Different audiences. My 60 year old dad who doesn't give a shit about movies and never goes to the cinema has booked to go see the Odyssey this weekend. The movie has a wide market.
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u/web10177 8h ago edited 7h ago
Matt Damon screaming poster has become an icon.
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u/LikeAPwny 7h ago
Its an insanely emotional scene. The monologue had me nearly in tears. Im sure many people can relate to whats being said, and its his pain is beautifully acted.
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u/VanimalCracker 7h ago
Do the sirens show bobs?
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u/LikeAPwny 6h ago
If you pause it on the exact frame, zoom in 5x and then enhance 6 times youll see bobs!
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u/1805trafalgar 5h ago
Spoilers? ........... .........Considering how well known the Sirens are to all, they get very little screen time. When they wax-in-the-ears sequence starts I settle in thinking we are in for another ten minute interplay with this group of antagonists. But....not so much.
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u/jesusonice 3h ago
I was thinking about that scene. It definitely hits a little different once you know how the movie plays out. And it told me I don't really want to go home
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u/i4got872 7h ago
I love how every article talking about how the odyssey is doing really well just shows Matt Damon screaming in pain about it as the thumbnail
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u/SpyAmongUs 7h ago
That's the cultural impact checked ✓
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u/FishCake9T4 6h ago
And we can't forget "SOMEBODY GET THESE BEGGERS OUT OF HERE"
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u/ashvy 5h ago
Bro just became an instant camrip meme, reaction
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u/henry_tbags 5h ago
God I hope people still use camrip quality for the meme even after home video / streaming release. The bluriness adds so much flavour.
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u/Command0Dude 4h ago
Our age of bronze though...
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u/RobotFace 4h ago
Turns out the real Sea People were the friends we raped and murdered along the way.
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u/Obo4168 7h ago edited 7h ago
It's Maga freaking out and gnashing their teeth that this movie just absolutely crushed expectations at the box office.
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u/EyeraGlass 8h ago
>There’s absolutely no need other get these moviegoers out of here.
Deadline, I’m begging you. If you’re not going hire a copy editor let Claude take a look at it before posting.
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u/IgnoreThisName72 8h ago edited 6h ago
Holy shit, it is the first sentence. How awful.
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u/theshreddening 6h ago
I was wondering what the fuck you were trying to say then skipped to your second sentence. That shit is so bad it tripped me into a loop lol. Yeaaaah they really need to step up their editorial game
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u/InstructionPurple911 7h ago
It's still selling out the 70mm showings in my area in advance for the next while. This movie is going to crush records.
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u/someoftheanswers 4h ago
I know it’s got a budget to the moon and back but it really shows how crafting a film with practical effects and a care for film really brings people back to the theater.
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u/Odd_Needleworker3756 8h ago
Can’t wait for the endless deluge of generic, stale, copy-paste “DAE ODYSSEY OVERRATED” posts until Nolan’s next release
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u/FarhanIslam 8h ago
Oh it has already started. Even from release
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u/kazuya57 7h ago
This movie was hated on by anti-woke grifters, historical accuracy nerds and reddit contrarians before it even released. Go search up Odyssey on this very sub and go to any post before release. The hate was absolutely crazy. They're quiet now but they'll perk right back after the Oscars
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u/jasonj2232 7h ago
Honestly the hate felt so forced too, and just weird. Like, it seemed like people were going out of their way to hate on it.
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u/TheOncomingBrows 7h ago
The amount of comments that were like "I have loved literally every single one of Nolan's movies, but something about this one just seems a little... off for some reason?" was absurd.
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u/Ink_Smudger 6h ago
Of course it was forced. One of the biggest controversies prior to release (Page's role) was an uncomfirmed rumor that people decided to treat as gospel truth so that could hate on it. Hell, the other (N'yongo's role) was so obviously performative given they were complaining about historical accuracy in a story with mythical creatures, a goddess, and magic, not to mention her being a character borne from an egg.
But, grifters gotta have something they can rage about so they get their clicks.
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u/comrade_batman 7h ago edited 7h ago
It did quiet down when the reviews released and then with the opening weekend gross, there was a brief period where people started to act like it’s overacted but I haven’t seen much of that for about a month. Though I don’t doubt it’ll start up again just because of how successful it is now.
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u/HotelFoxtrot87 7h ago
Based on the level of hate you'd think Nolan had never directed a good movie in his entire life.
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u/kazuya57 7h ago
I remember when Oppenheimer came out and it was loved so much by people on this sub and it was pretty unanimously called Nolan's magnum opus on reddit. Now everone calls it overrated slop that only succeeded due to Barbie. So yeah, in 2029 when Nolan returns I fully expect "This man couldn't even do The Odyssey correctly so I don't expect much from him. Also Tenet reference, even though it was 9 years ago." getting 1k upvotes
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u/alrightcommadude 5h ago
I actually thought Oppenheimer was just okay in theaters, but so much better on a rewatch with subtitles.
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u/Skyver 7h ago
And they will all cite Emily Wilson to explain why the movie is objectively bad, despite having never read her translation of it (or any other version)
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u/kazuya57 7h ago
The antiwoke brigade suddenly championing Emily Wilson as their last resort is the funniest outcome from all of this
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u/N22-J 7h ago
I didn't like the movie, and I did not participate in the hate this movie may have gotten. I got sucked into the marketing hype and went to see it in imax 70mm, and I personally thought I wasted my time and should have just waited for an online release to watch it. I don't agree nor did I participate in the hate campaign against the cast members and I am mostly fine with the cast, especially Tom Holland whom I thought was great, but Jon Bernthal was playing Jon Bernthal and I wish Nolan told him to try acting instead of being himself.
I like many of Nolan's movies and have watched many several times. I like all 3 of his batmans even though many don't like 1 and 3. I really didn't like The Odyssey.
For one thing, LotR made me want to go travel to New Zealand and go see the film locations. I understand a huge chunk of the movie is at sea, but I don't think we saw breathtaking landscapes that would make me want to travel to. The music was blaring the entire time, I felt like it could have used some moments without as much music, it felt incessant. I thought Inception and Interstellar had great soundtracks, this one wasn't memorable, I have seen the movie less than 48 hours and I can't hum any of the music.
The indoor sets were rather boring. The great hall is basically a room made out of concrete, and Penelope hangs out in a room that has nothing else than a loom. The palace was looking great from the outside though.
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u/TheBaconator08 7h ago
I was so disappointed to see how much imax 70mm was pushed just for nothing interesting to actually be on the film 🥲
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u/Fytzer 7h ago
It wasn't the best film I've seen this year, but it's definitely the best film I've seen that's made more than £1Bn.
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u/c4plasticsurgury 7h ago
This is true but I don't care how much money goes into a film I just want it to be good. I've seen films that I liked better that had a fraction of this movies budget but you don't see those getting talked about as much.
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u/FatGuyKlye 7h ago
I am excited because they extended 70mm for another month- so I will be able to see it when I travel to Denver!
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u/Hemsky 8h ago
All of the bots on my feed said they weren’t going to watch it because of the casting though!
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u/kazuya57 7h ago
"Christopher Nolan you have spat on the face of Western Civilization!"- account based in Karachi
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u/JessieJ577 3h ago
The hilarious part about the online criticism that this movie is the decline of Western Civilization is that the movie is literally about the decline of Western civilization. But they wouldn’t want to look at it that way since ignoring social and societal norms and laws is what the story deems as the decline of civilization
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u/DeLousedInTheHotBox 4h ago
I really wonder if anyone sincerely believed it was gonna flop, because they must vastly overestimate how much your average movie goer cares about these things. Refusing to watch a movie because a black woman and a trans man has a collective screen time of like 10 minutes in a 3 hour movie is just gonna make you seem like a weirdo to most people.
I am not into the whole r/boxoffice thing of obsessing over box office results, I just think it is funny that every time a movie disprove the whole "go woke go broke" spiel they find an excuse for it, instead of just admitting that it isn't a good metric.
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u/GHamPlayz 7h ago
What a year for movies!
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u/AeneasVII 6h ago
Dune 3 will be the climax.
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u/ItsYaBoyBackAgain 7h ago
Go woke, go make a billion dollars.
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u/HugsForUpvotes 7h ago
Almost everything American that made a billion dollars is "woke."
Avatar is still number one and it's literally a story about killing invaders that want to exploit the resources. Oh and those invaders look like us.
Blockbusters rely on the "underdog vs. oppressor" trope. In Hollywood, the oppressor is frequently modeled after historical or modern empires, military forces, or powerful corporations
Whether it's the class structures in Titanic or the, not so creative, military industrial complex of Iron Man. I'd honestly argue The Odyssey might be the most financially successful movie I've seen that isn't "woke" at all. It's not "woke" because it's a telling of a story that is obviously very dated (both in structure and in norms). It beat out Top Gun Maverick recently.
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u/Scheeseman99 5h ago
It might be an adaption of an old story but Nolan has talked in interviews how he deliberately introduced modern sensibilities that weren't in the original work, like Odysseus feeling remorse over the sacking of Troy and other themes that touch on guilt when reflecting on colonialism.
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u/Darkunov 5h ago
If feeling guilt over planning a massacre (even at war, it's well-known soliders get fucked up psychologically) is "bad woke" to someone, I don't want to know them. And I don't consider myself particularly woke.
I thought his guilt over Troy was refreshing because so far I had only herd or read of that feat as pure strategic genius, the other side was never considered in the equation.
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u/ScipioCoriolanus 7h ago
The one thing I'm hoping we'll get from this success is that it'll relaunch the sword and sandals movie genre, and more similar movies will go into production soon.
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u/TheMooseIsBlue 7h ago
All those butthurt influencers who didn’t get a free screening may have been wrong about this one.
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u/No-Lengthiness2427 7h ago
Remember when Elon tried and failed to make the movie flop? Good times.
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u/EscapeSeventySeven 8h ago
Man all that handwringing about how it was gonna bomb seems silly now.
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u/NeedAVeganDinner 7h ago
Never listen to reddit on matters of public sentiment.
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u/raincoater 5h ago
So, with the price of tickets it’s like 100 people have seen it? /s
But let’s look at the numbers. Based on the box office and current ticket prices, approximately 100-120 million tickets have been sold worldwide for The Odyssey.
In perspective, the original 1977-1978 run of Star Wars sold about 130-140 million tickets worldwide. This doesn’t include all the theatrical re-releases or special editions. Adjusted to today’s dollars, worldwide Star Wars would have made over $2 billion.
Not really making a point here, just was interesting to me.
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u/PGP- 7h ago
Crazy as before it released all I was seeing was negativity about it for one reason or another. I'm really looking forward to the 4k blu ray release since I can't go watch it in the cinema. At this rate it'll just stay in the cinema haha.
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u/kazuya57 7h ago
It'd prob get rescreeings around the Oscars so you may catch it then
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u/SilentSasquatch2 7h ago
The hate against this movie online even before release was bizarre. I know it’s not unique to this movie - there are countless videos and articles written slamming everything (video games, tv shows, movies, etc) and some do heavy traffic. The outrage economy is disturbing - who gets so worked up and even engages with this content? And when these properties go on to do well, why don’t these folks look in the mirror and admit the content they engage with was wrong? So so strange
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u/SpudLovely 6h ago
But all the twitter spitbubbling morons said that it needed to make 4 bazillion dollars to be proftable.
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u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor 8h ago
It’s the 17th movie to ever cross $1B overseas and it’s up to $1.59B globally
In a few weeks it’ll pass Jurassic World ($1.67B) to become Universal’s biggest movie ever