Anne Hathaway in the Odyssey (credit: NBCUniversal)
In a week where the biggest openings are a Broadway pro-shot and a Nicolas Winding Refn film in limited release, the story wasn’t ever going to be about the new blockbuster hitting cinemaplexes, though that will clearly be next week’s story as Spider-Man: Brand New Day threatens a minimum $200M domestic open, but Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jon Bernthal will still dominate the conversation as Nolan’s The Odyssey seems poised to not only become the fourth billion dollar film of the year, but the highest-grossing R-rated picture of all-time.
It goes without saying that The Odyssey finished first at the box office, but the larger story is how it finished first at the box office. Bear with DSR as we go through some numbers, but its $90M second weekend represents what’s officially the lowest drop in box office history for a film that opened to at least $100M, breaking the numbers set by Wicked and Top Gun: Maverick. Further impressing, its international territories went up. Not in terms of market share, considering every film does international rollouts over the course of a few months, more on one of its future markets in a second, but in terms of its box office in markets it had already opened in. Without the World Cup competition, it saw a 5% increase in Spain, 6% increase in Italy, as well as increases in Brazil and other markets. Suffice to say, the word-of-mouth is arguably the strongest of any film this decade. For future reference, people probably shouldn’t use a YouTube dislike extension that uses fake math equations to estimate dislikes while admitting they receive no actual information from YouTube and Reddit theories that Rotten Tomatoes is arbitrarily boosting scores simply based on the fact that they require people to watch the movie to rate it, and then claim that the word-of-mouth is poor. It’s almost as if that’s stupid.
Its biggest hurdle is going to be the incoming Spider-Man, but it feels like, just reading the tea leaves, those two movies can co-exist with each other. In just two weeks, this film has made well over $650M globally, with markets such as China and Japan still to open. Despite a new Marvel film, The Odyssey has IMAX exclusivity for another two weeks, and the showings are still tracking excellently in pre-sales. While the new Spider-Man film should force a larger drop from week two to three than week one to two, it shouldn’t entirely capitulate the box office returns. The IMAX story here is the main one, as it seems to be the primary driver. The second weekend (57%) saw a higher percentage of its box office in PLF than the first weekend (53%). Adam Aron, CEO of AMC Theatres, took to Twitter to tout that it’s the biggest single film in the history of AMC for IMAX, and the film has already grossed $75M off IMAX alone. Nolan has spent over two decades championing the technology, with Batman Begins being one of the first feature films to get an IMAX release, and its sequel, The Dark Knight, being the first film shot for IMAX. With the explosion of PLFs and the Oppenheimer craze, IMAX creating new cameras specifically for Nolan and The Odyssey, making IMAX 70MM a cultural event that people traveled to experience. One market, as we mentioned, that it has yet to open in is China. Nolan and Matt Damon, who stars as Odysseus, are going to Beging for the first-ever Hollywood red carpet premiere at the China National Film Museum, and that will launch the 800-screen IMAX network in China for the Odyssey. They are expecting it to be massive.
Nolan is now in striking distance of becoming the third highest-grossing director of all-time, behind only Steven Spielberg and James Cameron.
From what should quickly become a billion dollar film to the fastest billion dollar film, Toy Story 5 finished fourth at the box office this week to become the highest-grossing film so far of 2026, though Disney should beat its own record in a few weeks with Spider-Man: Brand New Day. But that isn’t the story here, considering we at DSR/CBC have been projecting this the entire time: it is now the third billion dollar film of 2026, with the Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day poised to become the fourth and fifth. With Avengers: Doomsday, that’s at least six, and who knows, maybe Dune 3 overperforms? DSR isn’t exactly anticipated much more than $800-$850M for Dune 3, but perhaps the Dunesday event boost helps it. With at least six all but assured, 2026 will have the second-most billion dollar films of all-time.
A few months ago in an earlier Report, you may remember us glossing over the pandemic recovery as inflated, considering 2018 and 2019 were the two biggest box office years of all-time, and it’s likely that a regression to the means was always likely, it’s just that pre-pandemic levels coincided with the world shutting down. But between this, a film like Obsession, which is now the sixth highest-grossing horror film ever and still hanging around the top ten in its eleventh week, and the overall health, 2026 is a return to form in the years heading into the pandemic, even if not quite at 2019 levels yet.
Finishing second at the box office was Moana in its third frame, and it’s already down to $10M over the course of a weekend, still $20M shy of even recouping its production budget. An all-time bomb from Disney, and we explored why here.
In fourth place, Hadestown: The Musical, a Broadway show I was actually at last weekend at the historic Walter Kerr for my second Broadway showing, debuted its pro-shot in a surplus of $10M. Bleecker Street is Livin’ It Up on Top as this becomes their highest-grossing opening weekend in studio history. This also topped Hamilton to become the highest-grossing pro shot in theatrical cinema history in its opening weekend. Whether or not this greases the tires on a film version of Hadestown remains to be seen, but the demand is real for a show that over the last seven years has become the biggest show in theatre.
Minions & Monsters made only $1M less than Moana with all the family movies bunched on top of each other, with The Invite, Evil Dead: Burn, and Young Washington all making $2M or less, alongside Alan Ritchson’s new experimental action film (yes, you read that correctly) Motor City, to round out the top ten. Outside of Motor City, which much like the film, there’s very little to have a dialgoue about, we’ve covered extensively in a previous editions, which you can find here.
Next week is Spider-Man, a movie that could open anywhere from $200M-$300M domestic and we wouldn’t be surprised. It’s going to be massive, and it’ll be fascinating to look at how it compares to No Way Home. The MCU, especially with the addition of Ryan Gosling as Ghostwriter and Ryan Coogler returning to complete the Black Panther trilogy, alongside the upcoming Doomsday and Secret Wars, the MCU seems to be on the up-and-up with its momentum, especially after the quality of 2025’s Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four: The First Steps. Join us Sunday as we discuss Brand New Day.
Jameus Mooney is an entertainment writer for Comicbook Clique, having covered the entertainment industry for years. You can follow him on Twitter here, and Letterboxd here. You can also listen to his horror podcast, The 2:17 Horror Podcast, at the DeathArts XIII YouTube channel.