Nolan's 'The Odyssey' Tops $320 Million Worldwide While 'Moana' and 'Supergirl' Bomb

A three-hour epic just outperformed superhero sequels

Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" opened to an estimated $124.5 million domestically over its first weekend, according to Den of Geek. That beat pre-release projections of around $105 million and gave Nolan the highest domestic opening of his career for a film that isn't a Batman movie or a sequel.

Globally, the film hit $264.1 million across its opening weekend, per Den of Geek, and Fox News reported the global total crossed $320 million within its first week, calling it Nolan's strongest global opening ever, ahead of "The Dark Knight" trilogy and 2023's "Oppenheimer." Fox News also reported the film kept earning through the week, pulling in more than $18 million on Monday and Wednesday and over $21 million on Tuesday.

The movie earned an "A" CinemaScore, according to Den of Geek, the same grade "Oppenheimer" received before it dropped only 43.4 percent in its second weekend. That's the kind of audience approval that tends to produce a long, leggy theatrical run rather than a quick fade.

The social media prediction that didn't hold up

Den of Geek noted that Elon Musk posted about his skepticism toward the Nolan adaptation 60 times in a single week last May, ahead of the film's release. The site's framing is blunt: the online noise around "The Odyssey" turned out to be, in its words, "more a tempest in a teacup than the zeitgeist-defining battleground the culture warriors imagine."

Plenty of studios and marketing teams do treat social media sentiment as a leading indicator of box office performance. Loud, sustained criticism from a high-follower account can shape pre-release narrative and even affect ticket pre-sales for some titles. The reasonable version of that concern isn't paranoia, it's a bet that online buzz correlates with turnout.

But in this case, the bet didn't pay off. Whatever skepticism circulated online, it didn't stop moviegoers from showing up in numbers that beat Wall Street-style prognosticator estimates by nearly 20 percent. An "A" CinemaScore means the people who actually paid for tickets liked what they saw, regardless of what was trending beforehand.

Meanwhile, the franchise machine is sputtering

While Nolan's original epic thrived, the summer's franchise slate has been rough. Disney's live-action "Moana," starring Dwayne Johnson and Catherine Laga'aia, opened to just $43 million domestically, according to Fox News. That's a fraction of the $56 million the 2016 animated original opened to, and nowhere close to the nearly $140 million "Moana 2" pulled in during 2024.

Fox News reported the live-action remake cost $250 million to produce and has grossed only $186 million globally so far, with Disney reportedly facing a loss of roughly $100 million on the project.

Warner Bros.' "Supergirl," starring Milly Alcock, fared similarly poorly. It opened to $37 million domestically, according to Fox News, and is expected to fall short of $150 million worldwide. That's a steep drop from 2025's "Superman," which grossed more than $600 million globally. Fox News reported Warner Bros. is also facing a projected $100 million loss on "Supergirl," muddying the outlook for the studio's rebooted DC Comics slate.

Universal and Illumination's "Minions & Monsters" also underwhelmed, opening to $37 million domestically last month and grossing roughly $366 million globally so far, according to Fox News, making it the weakest "Despicable Me"-franchise entry to date. Its 2024 predecessor outperformed it by a wide margin.

What this actually tells us

An original, three-hour literary adaptation from a filmmaker with a track record is outperforming legacy sequels and remakes riding on decades-old brand names. This pattern challenges the assumption, common in studio boardrooms, that pre-existing IP is a safer bet than an original concept with a bankable director attached.

Neither Universal, Disney, nor Warner Bros. has publicly detailed final production and marketing cost breakdowns for these titles, so the reported loss figures for "Moana" and "Supergirl" remain estimates rather than confirmed studio disclosures. Box office analysts will be watching whether "The Odyssey" holds its momentum through August the way "Oppenheimer" did in 2023, and whether studios respond by greenlighting more original, filmmaker-driven projects instead of another round of franchise remakes.