Christopher Nolan shouldn’t have many personal box-office records left to break. He’s had a long career involving a slew of hits, critical and commercial, including Oscar wins, a viral theatergoing campaign, and a wildly successful Batman trilogy. But leveling up is exactly what he did with The Odyssey last weekend, when his latest blockbuster opened to $264.1 million worldwide—more than his Best Picture winner Oppenheimer started with in 2023, and more than any other R-rated theatrical release this year. Nolan is a proven quantity at this point, but Hollywood still has every reason to cheer such a gargantuan start for an adaptation of a centuries-old poem.
The Odyssey’s haul thus far is a welcome sign for Hollywood. The movie now seems likely to bring in more than $400 million in North America, which would make it only the second R-rated film to ever do so. The achievement is the most recent example of what’s been working for cinema of late: a sense of originality. The Odyssey tweaks Homer’s classic story into a moodier version of the swords-and-sandals epic—and represents a rare swerve away from tired sequels, cheap remakes, and creaky cinematic universes. More pointed, however, its achievements offer two major lessons for the industry to draw from: Bet on quality, and don’t shy away from spectacle.
After all, The Odyssey’s initial success has both a highbrow and a lowbrow element to it. The Odyssey benefits from its august source material and auteur-branded advertising, the appeal of which has only grown in the years since “Barbenheimer” powered Oppenheimer to a nearly $1 billion worldwide gross. But on top of that, it has been marketed as a big-screen experience that audiences simply cannot skip. The Odyssey was the first movie shot entirely in IMAX’s large, nearly square aspect ratio, meaning viewers literally miss out on seeing some of the image when the film is projected on a regular screen. Ticket sales for IMAX screenings accounted for more than 20 percent of the opening gross around the world, representing a growing trend for blockbusters; 53 percent of the domestic total came from all “premium large formats.” The technical details behind the filmmaking appeal to cinephiles who appreciate the nitty-gritty of the production, while that hype also trickles down to those less in the know—audiences, perhaps not wanting to wait for a streaming release, are packing it in at regular auditoriums too. And as they keep seeking out the most impressive way to watch the film, audiences will continue to reinforce the idea that The Odyssey is a major theatrical event.
[Read: The problem with The Odyssey’s IMAX hype]
That formula worked for Amazon MGM’s sci-fi dramedy Project Hail Mary earlier this year, another heartening success that was billed as a visual spectacle filmed specifically for IMAX. Scale isn’t the only factor that compels audiences, however; A24 and Focus Features, the studios behind the horror phenomenons Backrooms and Obsession, held off on streaming releases, as viewers stateside continued to prioritize the theatrical experience. Meanwhile, 2026’s most notable failures have followed rulebooks that seem less and less valuable. The first new Star Wars movie in seven years, The Mandalorian and Grogu, had the saga’s lowest-grossing opening weekend ever. Supergirl, DC Comics’ continuation of a new superhero universe that was sparked with last year’s successful Superman, crashed and burned. Most shocking, Disney’s critically panned live-action remake of Moana will likely lose the studio at least $100 million, two years after the animated sequel Moana 2 made more than $1 billion worldwide.
Theatergoers are more frequently rejecting retreads of stretched-thin intellectual property, released by studios that seem afraid of taking the slightest gamble. Industry analysts could have warned Disney that there was little value in remaking Moana, a beloved classic that is nonetheless not quite 10 years old. Yet audiences had been mostly rewarding these efforts until now, even if reviews were poor or word of mouth was tepid. This year seems to be the culmination of a growing shift by viewers away from franchise tentpoles (though some series entries, such as the new Spider-Man and Avengers sequels, are expected to still punch through); moviegoers are seemingly moving instead toward efforts that feel more special. Imitating Christopher Nolan is something of a fool’s errand, of course, given that he makes one movie about every three years and tends to be pretty painstaking about it. But investing in and celebrating filmmakers’ biggest visions—and the grandeur of the visuals they’re creating—is proving again and again to be a risk worth taking.
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