Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Opens to Raves, Backlash and a $375M Bet

Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” sailed into theaters Friday carrying a 96% Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score, a $250 million budget and industry trackers projecting a global opening past $200 million. It also arrives trailing months of online backlash that bet against it succeeding at all.

Neither number settles the argument. A vocal cluster of critics, including a scathing pan in Time, says the three-hour epic buckles under its own scale. Early ticket tracking out of Europe suggests the backlash crowd got the business side badly wrong.

The $375 Million Wager

Universal Pictures spent $250 million making Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s epic and roughly $125 million more marketing it worldwide. That puts the studio’s total outlay at $375 million before a single ticket is counted.

The film had its U.S. premiere Tuesday night at AMC Lincoln Square in New York, with Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya and Charlize Theron walking the carpet. Stops in London, Paris and Mumbai came first.

Demand for large-format tickets has been building for a year, with several Imax 70mm sites selling out their opening slates the moment tickets went on sale. On opening day, some AMC customers waited up to an hour just to buy a ticket, a delay the chain blamed on demand rather than technical trouble.

It is also the first narrative feature ever shot entirely with Imax film cameras, a milestone Nolan has called his longest-held ambition.

Where Even the Raves Carry an Asterisk

The critics’ score sat at 98% with 147 reviews logged when the embargo lifted Wednesday morning, the highest of Nolan’s career at that point. By Friday it had eased slightly to 96% Certified Fresh as more reviews rolled in, alongside an 88% “universal acclaim” rating on Metacritic.

Most of what followed was close to unreserved. A handful of dissents kept it from being a clean sweep.

While The Odyssey is uneven, and no match for the sure-footedness and intellectual complexity of Oppenheimer, it’s elevated by the blindingly charismatic ensemble.

That was David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter’s chief film critic, who still called Damon’s performance superb. Forbes contributor Laura Sirikul and IGN’s Scott Collura both flagged pacing problems, with Sirikul noting that some scenes dragged on longer than they should have.

Time went further, describing the film as muddy and underwhelming even in Imax, and dismissing Lupita Nyong’o’s dual casting as Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra as “representing not a burst of imagination but a failure of nerve.”

Did the Casting Backlash Actually Hurt the Movie?

Not by the numbers so far. The countdown trailer drew more than 750,000 YouTube dislikes against roughly 80,000 likes, and prominent voices spent months attacking the casting. Yet early international tracking has “The Odyssey” outperforming Nolan’s own Oppenheimer in France, and the reviews still arrived nearly unanimous.

Much of the anger targeted four roles built out or reimagined for the screen.

• Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra – both played by Lupita Nyong’o, a dual casting that drew racist commentary online months before release.
• Sinon – the soldier behind the Trojan Horse ruse, played by Elliot Page.
• Athena – taken on by Zendaya, whose scenes never overlap with husband Tom Holland’s despite both appearing in the cast.
• The bard – a modern, rap-inflected role written for Travis Scott to draw a line between hip-hop and oral poetry.

Nyong’o addressed the criticism directly. “Our cast is representative of the world,” she said, adding that she had no interest in mounting a defense. Nolan sounded just as unmoved, telling Variety the backlash “comes with the territory.”

The ensemble drew attention long before release. Early set photos of Pattinson and Zendaya filming together circulated more than a year before the premiere, feeding the same anticipation that later curdled into trailer pile-ons.

Day-one tracking shared by the analytics account Box Office Forecast put “The Odyssey” at roughly 140% of Oppenheimer’s opening-day pace in France, but only about 45% of it in Indonesia. That kind of split is ordinary for a global rollout, where local holidays and competing releases swing numbers market by market.

Stacking The Odyssey Against Nolan’s Own Record

Nolan’s twelve previous features have earned more than $6 billion combined and collected 18 Oscars from 49 nominations, including best picture and best director for Oppenheimer. “The Odyssey” is now tracking to open bigger than all of them except his two Batman sequels.

Oppenheimer is the closest comparison point. It opened to $82.4 million domestically before quadrupling that figure to a $330 million domestic final and $975 million worldwide, on its way to seven Academy Awards.

Nolan has been here before, wrestling a passion project into something a studio could sell at scale. He has described how he took Interstellar back from Steven Spielberg years earlier, a similar story of reshaping inherited material into something distinctly his own.

A widely shared career retrospective tracing his run from Batman to Oppenheimer made the rounds this week, a reminder of how rarely Nolan misses commercially, whatever critics make of any single film.

Europe Squares Off Against a World Cup Final

Europe is where Nolan typically overperforms, and Universal is counting on it again. Oppenheimer earned $52.7 million in Germany, $43.2 million in France and $31 million in Italy in 2023, on top of a $13.9 million UK opening that legged out past $75 million.

Large-format demand has been unusually front-loaded across the continent. London’s BFI Imax and the London Science Museum sold out their 70mm slates a year before release, and Prague’s Oskar Imax Plaza cleared out just as fast.

Universal has also floated an early prologue reel for select Imax theaters, a rollout wrinkle that could matter most in European markets where 70mm screens are scarce and demand runs highest.

This weekend also has to share attention with the World Cup. The Spain-Argentina final lands Sunday, competing directly for the audience Universal is chasing across the UK and continental Europe.

What We Know:

• The critics’ score sits at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and 88% on Metacritic as of Friday.
• Advance Imax 70mm sales sold out at multiple European sites a year before release.
• Industry trackers project a global opening weekend above $200 million.

What’s Unconfirmed:

• Actual domestic and international grosses, which will not be final until studios report Monday.
• Whether the Spain-Argentina final dents Sunday attendance across European markets.
• A Rotten Tomatoes audience score, which had not yet posted as of Wednesday’s review embargo.

Monday’s Real Verdict

Strip away the reviews and the backlash, and Universal is really running a financing equation. Forbes contributor Paul Tassi calculated the studio’s break-even point at $625 million to $750 million once theater splits are factored in, against that $375 million spend.

Nolan has cleared that bar before. Oppenheimer needed nowhere near that much and still finished at $975 million. Only one Nolan film since 2006, Tenet, has grossed under $500 million worldwide.

Universal gets its real answer Monday, when actual ticket sales land against that $375 million bill.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Long Is The Odyssey, and When Did Previews Start?

“The Odyssey” runs about three hours and carries an R rating. Thursday-night previews began at 2 p.m. local time, ahead of the film’s official Friday opening across North America.

Did Nolan Actually Shoot the Whole Film on IMAX Cameras?

Yes. Nolan shot more than 2 million feet of film during a 91-day production, making “The Odyssey” the first narrative feature ever completed entirely with Imax film cameras, according to comments he gave Empire magazine.

Is The Odyssey Faithful to Homer’s Original Poem?

Not entirely. Sinon, the soldier behind the Trojan Horse ruse played by Elliot Page, does not actually appear in Homer’s Odyssey or Iliad. Nolan expanded or invented several roles and wrote the dialogue in modern English rather than a period style.

Could The Odyssey Beat Oppenheimer’s Box Office Total?

It is possible but unproven. Forbes puts Universal’s break-even between $625 million and $750 million, and the tracking account Box Office Forecast has projected a long-range worldwide total near $925 million, though that estimate comes from a single analytics source and has not been matched elsewhere yet.

Where Was The Odyssey Filmed?

Production spanned six countries, including Italy, Iceland, Greece, Morocco and Scotland, plus additional work at Universal’s studio lot in California. Specific locations included Sicily’s Favignana island and the Moray Firth inlet in northeastern Scotland.