The Odyssey: Box Office Records, Reviews and Where to Watch

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey opened in theatres on 17 July 2026 and is still a theatrical exclusive. There is no streaming date, no digital rental, and no announced home release. If you want to see it right now, the only option anywhere in the world is a cinema ticket.

The short version of its run: Universal reported a global opening weekend of 264.1 million dollars, the biggest worldwide opening of Nolan's career, and trade reporting on 29 July put the running total at roughly 727.9 million dollars after 12 days, against a reported 250 million dollar budget. Critics are largely on board. The loudest dissent came from an unexpected direction: Emily Wilson, the translator Nolan publicly credited as an influence, published a review calling the screenplay abysmal. All of it is unpacked below, with sources and dates attached to every number.

Where to watch The Odyssey right now

Theatres only. The film is playing in standard digital, premium large format, 70mm, IMAX digital and IMAX 70mm film. It runs 173 minutes and is rated R in the United States.

Format matters more than usual here, because The Odyssey is the first narrative feature shot entirely with IMAX 70mm film cameras. Only 41 locations worldwide played it in IMAX 70mm film, and demand for those screenings was extreme: Screen International reported the biggest ever three day opening at London's BFI IMAX, and France's new Pathe Odysseum sold out every show. If a 70mm IMAX ticket is not available near you, IMAX digital is the next closest thing to the intended presentation.

India

The Odyssey released in India on the same day and is still running. It is reported to have opened on more than 2,000 screens, with trade coverage citing figures above 2,500 and dubbed versions in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu alongside the English original. Treat the screen count and language list as reported rather than officially confirmed.

India is one of the strongest IMAX markets for the film in percentage terms. Bollywood Hungama reported that 34 IMAX screens delivered around 48.25 crore rupees, about 36.4 percent of the film's entire India total.

The Odyssey box office, with the receipts

Opening weekend

Universal reported 124.5 million dollars domestic and 139.6 million dollars international for a 264.1 million dollar global opening weekend. That is the biggest worldwide launch of Nolan's career, passing the roughly 249 million dollars The Dark Knight Rises did in 2012. CinemaScore exit polling gave it an A.

Where the total stands now

Screen International reported a worldwide cume of 652.0 million dollars after two weekends, split 289.4 million dollars domestic and 362.6 million dollars international. The second weekend held remarkably well: 90.0 million dollars domestic, down about 30 percent, and 137.6 million dollars internationally, down only about 3 percent in holdover markets.

By 29 July, trade reporting had the film at roughly 727.9 million dollars worldwide after 12 days, with 320.5 million dollars domestic and 407.4 million dollars international, making it the fourth biggest release of 2026 at that point. These figures move daily. You may still see a worldwide figure around 683 million dollars quoted elsewhere; that was accurate a few days earlier and has been overtaken.

Top international markets through two weekends, per Screen International: UK and Ireland 47.3 million dollars, France 32.6 million dollars, Italy 30.5 million dollars, Germany 21.2 million dollars and Australia 20.8 million dollars. India stood at 14.5 million dollars.

The IMAX records

The film took 51.8 million dollars globally in IMAX in its opening weekend, about 19.6 percent of the worldwide opening, described as a record IMAX opening in like for like markets, excluding China, Japan and South Korea. Screen International reported record IMAX openings in 48 territories, among them France, Italy, India, Spain, Brazil, the Netherlands and Poland. IMAX 70mm film locations alone did 6.3 million dollars from 41 screens, an average of roughly 153,000 dollars per screen.

Screen International reported the second weekend at 48 million dollars in IMAX, described as the highest grossing second weekend for any film in IMAX history, with 5.2 million dollars from 41 IMAX 70mm locations.

You will also see claims that this was the biggest IMAX opening day ever and the biggest 70mm opening day ever, ahead of Oppenheimer. Those come from trade reporting rather than IMAX's own release, and outlets frame the weekend record differently, so treat them as reported.

India numbers

Indian trackers disagree with each other, which is normal, so here is the spread rather than a single number. Around days 12 and 13, published nett estimates ranged from about 122.59 crore rupees (Koimoi, day 12) to 129.87 crore rupees (Sacnilk, day 13) to 132.65 crore rupees (Bollywood Hungama, day 13). Sacnilk put the day 13 India gross at about 155.02 crore rupees.

The benchmark everyone is measuring against is Oppenheimer's India lifetime, itself quoted between roughly 128 crore and 132 crore rupees depending on the tracker. Bollywood Hungama reported on day 13 that The Odyssey had passed it. Given the spread, the honest framing is that it is at or just past Oppenheimer and on course to become Nolan's biggest Indian release. Its run now faces competition from Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which rolled out across international markets in the closing days of July and reaches North America on 31 July 2026. How much of The Odyssey's screen count that costs it is not yet measurable.

What critics and classicists say

The aggregate scores

On Rotten Tomatoes the film sits at 94 percent from 455 critic reviews, with a 97 percent audience Popcornmeter. Metacritic has it at 88 from 62 critic reviews, inside its "universal acclaim" band, with 92 percent of those reviews scored positive and none negative. Reviews have singled out the physical scale and Matt Damon's performance.

There is a genuine split further down. Metacritic's user score sits at 5.4 out of 10 from roughly 2,672 ratings, and 41 percent of those ratings are negative, so general audience response is a good deal more divided than the 97 percent Popcornmeter suggests. All of these numbers move daily.

Emily Wilson's review, and why it matters

Nolan repeatedly cited Emily Wilson's 2017 translation during the press tour, quoting her opening line, "Tell me about a complicated man." Wilson, a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, then published a long review of the film, titled "An Uncomplicated Man", in the London Review of Books. It went online on 27 July 2026 and appears in the issue dated 13 August 2026. It is not a rave.

Wilson wrote that the film "lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth," that "its narrative structure is gimmicky," and that "the writing is abysmal." She closed with the line that got quoted everywhere: "I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script." Speaking separately to the Associated Press, she was warmer about the effect, saying she wanted to celebrate that so many more people are now aware of the poem, while arguing Nolan tried to pack everything in and missed themes essential to it, and that Penelope's diminished role undercut the marriage at the story's centre.

This is one named scholar's opinion, published as criticism. It is not a verdict on the film, and given where the aggregate scores sit it plainly is not the consensus. It is worth reading precisely because she is the person whose words Nolan borrowed.

The other translator in the room

Daniel Mendelsohn, whose own Odyssey translation was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2025, reviewed the film in the New York Review of Books. He credited Nolan's "great visual panache" but argued the hero had "no cleverness, no humor, no wily charm," and that Nolan had remade Homer's Odysseus "in his own image," a sibling to the tormented protagonists of Memento, Batman and Oppenheimer. In the review he notes only that Nyong'o's Helen was "a bit of casting that launched a thousand tweets"; his fuller defence of that choice, arguing Nolan uses Helen exactly as the Greek authors did, to provoke and unsettle how we think about beauty and identity, came in a separate piece for the New York Times.

Which Odyssey translation should I read first

A lot of people are searching for this off the back of the film, so here is a factual shortlist. All of these are complete English translations of Homer's Odyssey.

• Emily Wilson (2017, W. W. Norton): the first published English verse translation of the poem by a woman. Iambic pentameter, matched line for line to the Greek across 12,110 lines. The common modern starting point, and the one Nolan quoted.
• Daniel Mendelsohn (2025, University of Chicago Press): the newest major version, also line for line, deliberately more formal than recent modernising translations.
• Robert Fagles (1996): free verse, dramatic and very readable. A long standing recommendation for first time readers who want momentum.
• Richmond Lattimore (1965): the closest of the well known versions to literal Greek word order. Fidelity over flow.
• Robert Fitzgerald (1961): prized for its lyricism and long treated as a literary standard.
• Older landmarks: George Chapman (1615), Alexander Pope (1725), Samuel Butler (1900) and E. V. Rieu (1946, the first Penguin Classic), all still in print and all reading very differently from each other.

If you only read one and you came in through the film, Wilson or Fagles will get you furthest fastest.

Full cast and characters

Actor	Character
Matt Damon	Odysseus, king of Ithaca
Tom Holland	Telemachus, his son
Anne Hathaway	Penelope, his wife
Zendaya	Athena
Charlize Theron	Calypso
Lupita Nyong'o	Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra (dual role)
Robert Pattinson	Antinous, leader of the suitors
Samantha Morton	Circe
Jon Bernthal	Menelaus, king of Sparta
Benny Safdie	Agamemnon
John Leguizamo	Eumaeus, the swineherd
Himesh Patel	Eurylochus, second in command
Mia Goth	Melantho, a servant in Ithaca
Elliot Page	Sinon
Bill Irwin	Polyphemus, the cyclops
James Remar	Tiresias
Ryan Hurst	Mentor

The wider ensemble includes Corey Hawkins, Jovan Adepo, Will Yun Lee, Logan Marshall-Green, Josh Stewart, Jesse Garcia, Andrew Howard and Jimmy Gonzales. Travis Scott is reported to appear in a cameo as a bard.

When will The Odyssey stream

No streaming date has been announced. Universal has not set a digital rental date, a purchase date or a Peacock date, and anything you see stated as fact is a projection.

Here is the window most estimates are built on. Oppenheimer opened on 21 July 2023, hit premium video on demand 123 days later on 21 November 2023, and reached Peacock another 87 days after that on 16 February 2024. Apply the same spacing to a 17 July 2026 release and you land around mid November 2026 for digital and mid February 2027 for Peacock. Some outlets have floated an earlier Peacock arrival in late 2026, closer to Universal's more typical three to four month pattern.

Two things push toward the longer end: Nolan has unusual leverage over his own theatrical windows and defends them publicly, and a February date would sit neatly inside awards voting season, exactly as Oppenheimer's did. In India, expect a further gap, since Universal titles typically reach Indian streaming later and Peacock does not operate here directly.

Frequently asked questions

Is The Odyssey on streaming yet

No. As of 30 July 2026 it is in cinemas only, with no digital, disc or streaming date announced anywhere.

How much has The Odyssey made at the box office

Roughly 727.9 million dollars worldwide as of 29 July 2026, after a 264.1 million dollar global opening weekend. The reported production budget is 250 million dollars.

Is The Odyssey Christopher Nolan's biggest film

It has the biggest opening weekend of his career, worldwide. It is not yet his highest grossing film overall. The Dark Knight Rises finished at about 1.08 billion dollars globally, and The Odyssey is still running.

How long is The Odyssey

173 minutes, which is 2 hours and 53 minutes. It is rated R in the United States.

Did the Odyssey translator really criticise the film

Yes. Emily Wilson, whose 2017 translation Nolan cited as an influence, published a critical review in the London Review of Books, online on 27 July 2026 and in the issue dated 13 August 2026, in which she called the writing abysmal and said she would be ashamed to have written any part of the script. That is her opinion as a named critic, not a consensus verdict.

Is The Odyssey worth seeing in IMAX

It is the first feature shot entirely on IMAX 70mm film cameras, and audiences are voting with their wallets: IMAX took about 20 percent of the global opening weekend and about 36 percent of the film's India total. IMAX 70mm film is the intended presentation, but only 41 locations worldwide played it in that format.

Do I need to read Homer before watching

No. The film is self contained. If you want context afterwards, the translation list above is a better entry point than a plot summary.

What to watch next

• Spider-Man: Brand New Day: Tom Holland and Zendaya reunite two weeks after The Odyssey, in the summer's other event release.
• Punisher: One Last Kill: if Jon Bernthal's Menelaus sent you looking, here is where his other big 2026 role stands.
• Daredevil: Born Again season 2: more Bernthal, with a where to watch breakdown by region.
• What order to watch Star Wars in 2026: another sprawling epic that rewards a deliberate viewing order.
• Godzilla movies in order: for large things on the largest possible screen.

Want something you can stream tonight instead? Use Discover to filter by platform, mood and region. We will update this post the moment Universal confirms a digital or Peacock date.