SerpApi.Org
Christopher Nolan just broke his personal record with The Odyssey, which hauled in $124.5 million in the US in its opening weekend. The film is now Nolan's biggest domestic non-sequel debut. That's not at all surprising, since fans, and those who've read the Homer epic, have been anticipating the adaptation since it was confirmed in 2024. It was a long wait, but The Odyssey has now been unleashed, further establishing Nolan as one of Hollywood's visionary auteurs. He's following in the footsteps of another prestige filmmaker, whose sci-fi epic swept theaters last month.
Globally, The Odyssey is also the biggest weekend opening of Nolan's career. It has beaten The Dark Knight Rises ($249 million) and The Dark Knight ($198 million) by grossing $264 million worldwide on debut. The Odyssey premiered in 73 international markets, immediately beating competing releases in 48 territories. The film is now the third-biggest opening of 2026, trailing behind The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ($372.5 million) and Toy Story 5 ($312 million). Four days after launch, The Odyssey has also now outpaced Disclosure Day's final global gross.
'Disclosure Day' Sprinted at the Box Office but Fumbled in the End
Disclosure Day ended its theatrical run with a $234.7 million worldwide take. Steven Spielberg's sci-fi thriller epic was also highly anticipated before its release, when interest in unidentified aerial phenomena was at its peak. It sprinted at the box office on opening weekend, taking $44.5 million in domestic gross, but later clashed with juggernaut IPs Supergirl and Toy Story 5. June was also still dominated by breakout indie hits Backrooms and Obsession. Disclosure Day had a strong start but suffered a 62% second-week drop, which cast a shadow on its longevity. The film left theaters less than six weeks after release — it arrives on PVOD on Jul. 21.
The Odyssey has beaten Disclosure Day's total gross after just one weekend, thanks to the "Nolan Effect." The director has been amassing a following since his 1998 debut, Following, but especially when he took on grand-scale projects, starting with Batman Begins. Now with 13 feature films under his belt, his latest venture is arguably his most ambitious yet. Nolan took on the challenge and adapted a seminal, 3,000-year-old epic, one of Western literature's foundational texts. That set high expectations among fans and critics, but just like Spielberg, Nolan proved he was up to the task.
'The Odyssey' Showcases Christopher Nolan at His Peak
Spielberg and Nolan are widely considered two of Hollywood's high-profile auteurs, and they both took massive risks to earn that status. Jaws almost tanked Spielberg's career with production delays and ballooning costs, while Nolan's 2000 indie film Memento was rejected by multiple distributors before getting greenlit. Jaws propelled Spielberg's filmmaking career, and Memento's success paved the way for Batman Begins, which offered a glimpse of what a Nolan epic looks like. His last film, Oppenheimer, was considered a masterpiece and a cinematic event.
It's way too early to forecast The Odyssey's long-term performance and whether it crosses the $1 billion mark, but the film was projected to gross around $200 million globally on opening, and it has now well surpassed that. The next two weeks will prove if it has box office legs, and that's plenty of time before Spider-Man: Brand New Day hits theaters.
