The Odyssey passes USD 1 billion in three weeks: reading worldwide box office

Correction (2026-09-10): The scope, comparisons and interpretation of key figures have been reviewed and corrected below. The original publication date is retained.

Christopher Nolan's latest crossed $1 billion worldwide in just three weeks — here's what the numbers behind that run actually show.

What the film is

Directed by Christopher Nolan, "The Odyssey" brings Homer's epic to the screen as a mythological action epic. Matt Damon stars as Odysseus, the hero of the Trojan War, with Anne Hathaway as his wife Penelope and Tom Holland as their son Telemachus, joined by Lupita Nyong'o, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, and Charlize Theron. It opened in the U.S. on July 17 and in South Korea on August 5, runs about 172 minutes, and carries an adults-only rating locally. The film also drew attention for being shot entirely on IMAX 70mm film. It follows Odysseus's journey home to the wife and son awaiting him after ten years of war in Troy.

The numbers

The opening-day figures were striking from the start. In South Korea it drew 291,008 admissions on its first day, surpassing every previous Nolan opening — "Tenet" (137,740), "Inception" (149,246), "The Dark Knight" (165,380), "Dunkirk" (224,242), and even "Interstellar" (227,025).

The cumulative pace was just as fast. By day four (August 8) it had crossed 1 million admissions in South Korea — a day faster than the five days Nolan's "Oppenheimer" took to reach the same mark. Audience response has also been strong: a 97% CGV Golden Egg score, 9.6 out of 10 on Lotte Cinema, and 9.3 on Megabox.

Reported worldwide opening-weekend gross was USD 264.1 million, with cumulative gross passing USD 1 billion on August 7. Gross exceeding production cost does not establish investor recoupment. Passing USD 1 billion alone also does not establish Nolan’s highest-grossing film.

The critical picture, though, is split. Rotten Tomatoes shows both sides high — 95% from critics, 97% from audiences — while on Metacritic critics gave it 89 but the user score sits at just 5.1 out of 10 (51 on a 100-point scale). IMDb held at 8.3 (from roughly 56,000 votes) despite attempted review bombing.

What drove this

On the production side, Nolan's signature large-scale practical filmmaking and IMAX 70mm cinematography, paired with a marquee cast anchored by Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, and Tom Holland, are widely credited. The 95% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes reflects strong industry regard for the craft itself.

Externally, prime summer release timing and Nolan's promotional visit to South Korea both helped domestic box office. The film held the top spot in advance ticket sales even against competition including "Spider-Man 4" and local releases "The King Who Married a Woman" and "Hope." Pent-up demand played a role too — IMAX screenings had reportedly been selling out as far as a year in advance, translating directly into the record opening numbers.

The debate

The split is fairly clear-cut. Critic and audience metrics (Rotten Tomatoes, CGV, Megabox) have stayed consistently high, while a segment of online commentary that objected to the casting even before release dragged down the user score on a U.S. review platform (Metacritic's 5.1). Many read this less as a verdict on the film's quality than as a protest vote over a casting decision. IMDb, despite reports of large-scale review bombing, held in the 8-point range, and in South Korea, where the controversy barely registered, audience scores stayed in the 9-point range throughout. That the same film's "reputation" can read so differently depending on region and platform is the central point of debate in this case.

What's next

If the current trajectory holds, "The Odyssey" is within reach of becoming Nolan's highest-grossing film ever. It has already topped $1 billion in three weeks, and the mild second-weekend drop suggests room for a long, word-of-mouth-driven run. Having crossed 1 million admissions quickly in South Korea too, whether its final domestic tally surpasses "Oppenheimer's" 3.22 million is worth watching. It's still too early to say how the online casting controversy might factor into awards-season conversation, or whether this success will encourage other studios to greenlight their own large-scale mythological epics.

This is nuloq's own analysis based on the public box-office data, ratings, reporting, and official sources listed under Sources, written with the help of AI. It is an interpretation of public data for information and criticism only — not a definitive judgment of any film, filmmaker, or studio — and box-office and rating figures reflect the time of writing. We correct the text if errors are found.