Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' Opens to $120 Million, Best Live-Action Debut of 2026

Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" pulled in an estimated $120 million domestically over its first three days, according to Deadline figures cited by Dark Horizons, making it the best opening weekend of any live-action movie in 2026.

Pre-release tracking had the film pegged for $80 million to $90 million, according to World of Reel. Industry projections shifted once Wednesday reviews dropped and word of mouth kicked in.

The film earned roughly $50 million on its first Friday, which included $17.5 million to $17.6 million in Thursday preview screenings, according to both Dark Horizons and tribune.com.pk. That was already the biggest single-day opening of Nolan's career.

This is a three-hour, R-rated epic. Movies like that don't usually open this big. Nolan pulled it off anyway, with premium formats playing a significant role. Dark Horizons reported that IMAX screens accounted for 25% of Friday's gross, IMAX 70MM added another 5%, and standard 70MM contributed 3%, with premium large-format (PLF) screens bringing in another 25%. Altogether, more than half the weekend's business came from premium screens, many of which sold out months in advance.

"The Odyssey" now ranks as the third-biggest domestic opening of the year, trailing only "Toy Story 5" ($159.6 million) and "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie" ($131.7 million), according to Dark Horizons. It beat the previous live-action leader for 2026, the Michael Jackson biopic "Michael," which opened to $97 million before going on to gross $1 billion worldwide, as reported by both Breitbart and World of Reel.

For Nolan, it's his third-best opening ever, behind only "The Dark Knight Rises" ($160.8 million) and "The Dark Knight" ($158.4 million), per Dark Horizons. For lead actor Matt Damon, it nearly doubles his previous career-best opening, "The Bourne Ultimatum," which debuted at $69.2 million.

Internationally, the film is tracking toward a worldwide opening north of $200 million, with tribune.com.pk reporting the movie collected around ₹20 crore on its first day in India alone, marking the country's largest Hollywood opening and the biggest opening-day number of Damon's career there.

The reviews validate the box office. Dark Horizons put the Rotten Tomatoes critic score at 95%, with an 8.7/10 average, while audiences scored it 97% positive from more than 2,500 verified ratings. The film also earned an 'A' CinemaScore in exit polling, which Dark Horizons called a rare achievement for an R-rated release. Breitbart's Nolte cited the same audience numbers and called the reaction "everything a filmmaker could hope for."

There was real concern heading into release that casting decisions in the film would create backlash loud enough to hurt ticket sales. Critics of the casting argued Nolan made choices driven by modern identity politics rather than fidelity to Homer's text, a complaint common among audiences skeptical of recent Hollywood remakes leaning on what they see as box-checking over storytelling. Breitbart's John Nolte, who writes from a perspective sympathetic to that criticism, said the controversy "struck me as overblown" and noted he hadn't yet seen the film himself before writing his review of the numbers. World of Reel's own review was more mixed on execution, praising Damon's performance as "possibly the best of his career" while arguing Tom Holland was miscast as Telemachus and Zendaya was "underused" as Athena. That's a real, substantive quality critique, and it came from a reviewer who otherwise called the film "an astonishing experience."

The film has essentially no major competition for two weeks. World of Reel noted that recent releases "Supergirl" and "Minions" underperformed, and Dark Horizons reported Disney's "Moana" re-release is set to drop 56% in its second weekend to around $19 million, a soft hold that looks like a money-loser for the studio. "Evil Dead Burn" fell even harder, down 64% to $5 million.

The next real test comes July 31, when "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" opens, according to Breitbart. Until then, "The Odyssey" has the field to itself, and with IMAX screens sold out for weeks in multiple countries, the studio's real question isn't whether the film holds through its second weekend. It's whether Nolan's original three-hour war epic can cross the $1 billion global mark that Breitbart and World of Reel both floated as a realistic ceiling.