{"id":699205,"date":"2026-07-19T00:24:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T00:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/699205\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T00:24:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T00:24:13","slug":"the-odyssey-is-on-course-to-break-box-office-records-on-opening-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/699205\/","title":{"rendered":"The Odyssey is on course to break box office records on opening weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Christopher Nolan\u2019s The Odyssey<\/a> is set to become the biggest box office success of the director\u2019s career.<\/p>\n

The 55-year-old filmmaker<\/a> will be celebrating after his epic adaptation of the celebrated work by Ancient Greek poet Homer broke records both domestically and internationally.<\/p>\n

In the United States, the film earned $51 million on Friday and is predicted to make around $120 million across its opening weekend. That would make the Matt Damon-starring historical drama the biggest live action film of the year, behind only animated hits Toy Story 5 ($159 million) and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ($131 million) overall.<\/p>\n

At the global box office, The Odyssey is expected to surpass 2012\u2019s The Dark Knight Rises to give Nolan his biggest ever worldwide opening. Deadline<\/a> expects the film to make $257.8 million globally, ahead of the $249 million banked by Nolan\u2019s Batman sequel. <\/p>\n

Once again, that would place it in third place overall in this year\u2019s box office charts, behind Toy Story 5 which made $312 million worldwide and Super Mario Galaxy Movie which made $372.5 million worldwide.<\/p>\n

\"MattMatt Damon and Zendaya in ‘The Odyssey’, which has given Christopher Nolan his biggest ever opening weekend worldwide (Universal Pictures)<\/p>\n

The Odyssey, which was made for a reported budget of $250 million, has also given star Damon the biggest opening weekend of his career as a leading man.<\/p>\n

Prior to the release of the film, some social media users had criticized the production for its casting.<\/p>\n

In January, Tesla founder Elon Musk<\/a> said Nolan had \u201clost his integrity\u201d by casting Lupita Nyong\u2019o as Helen<\/a> in response to a user on X claiming the \u201c face that launched a thousand ships\u201d was \u201cfair skinned, blonde\u201d.<\/p>\n

Nyong’o dismissed that criticism by saying that the film\u2019s cast is \u201crepresentative of the world\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"TheThe Odyssey’ is Matt Damon\u2019s highest-grossing film as a leading man (Universal Pictures)\"TheThe casting of Lupita Nyong\u2019o was criticized by Elon Musk (Getty)<\/p>\n

The Odyssey <\/a>stars Damon as the hero Odysseus<\/a>, Anne Hathaway as his wife Penelope and Tom Holland as their son Telemachus<\/a>. Also featuring Zendaya as Athena, Charlize Theron as Calypso, Jon Bernthal as Menelaus and Benny Safdie as Agamemnon, it follows Odysseus along his perilous journey back home after the 10-year Trojan War.<\/p>\n

It has been widely praised by critics, with The Independent\u2019s Clarisse Loughrey handing the film a five-star review<\/a> and writing: \u201cAs a feat of pure adaptation, Nolan has achieved something I admittedly thought was near impossible. <\/p>\n

His stamp is all over the film \u2013 this is intellectual, brutalist, muscular Hollywood fare \u2013 yet it never wavers in its commitment to, and comprehension of, its source text. There\u2019s not a single decision here that\u2019s been thoughtlessly made, nor that I imagine Nolan himself couldn\u2019t easily defend, much to the imagined chagrin of certain lawless parts of the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":699206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[33792,96,2839,33794,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-699205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-bestof","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-topix","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=699205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/699206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}