There are few directors working today who can attract large crowds to the theater with just their name alone. Christopher Nolan is one of them. One of the reasons why The Odyssey is one of the most anticipated films of the year is the fact that it’s Nolan’s latest work, arriving a few years after Oppenheimer became a box office smash that won Best Picture. Excitement for The Odyssey has been steadily brewing ever since the project was announced; the prospect of Nolan bringing one of fiction’s most legendary stories to life with a star-studded cast is extremely tantalizing. Based on the incredibly high demand for IMAX tickets, it seems like The Odyssey is going to do very well at the box office, and now there’s a range for its opening weekend.
According to Deadline, The Odyssey is currently projected to gross somewhere between $80-100 million domestically over its first three days. That’s a wide range, the high end of which would mark a surprising first for Nolan. None of the director’s non-Batman movies have opened with $100+ million at the domestic box office. In Nolan’s career, only two of his films have earned that much out of the gate:
Movie Opening Weekend (Domestic)
Memento $235,488
Insomnia $20.9 million
Batman Begins $48.7 million
The Prestige $14.8 million
The Dark Knight $158.4 million
Inception $62.7 million
The Dark Knight Rises $160.8 million
Interstellar $47.5 million
Dunkirk $50.5 million
Tenet $9.3 million (COVID release)
Oppenheimer $82.4 million
The Odyssey Highlights the Power of Christopher Nolan at the Box Office
Matt Damon as Odysseus in The Odyssey
Image via Universal
Since experiencing his breakout in the 2000s, Nolan has been one of Hollywood’s highest-grossing directors (his films have earned over $6 billion collectively worldwide), but The Odyssey would be an impressive accomplishment even by his lofty standards. It was always expected it would do well commercially, but a few months ago, a $100 million opening might have been out of the question — not just because of Nolan’s track record, but because The Odyssey is a three-hour, R-rated fantasy epic. On paper, the R rating limits the film’s potential audience, and a lengthy run time typically limits the number of screenings theaters can book daily.
