After weeks after DSR/CBC speculating that The Odyssey’s time as public enemy number one in the right wing grift wouldn’t stop it from making $1B thanks to its roaring popularity with real-life, actual human beings, it has not only surpassed it, but become Chris Nolan’s highest-grossing film in less than a month in theatres before it even opened in major markets such as Japan or China.
Matt Damon in The Odyssey. (Photo credit: Universal)
While we’ll certainly gloss over some other numbers, namely the second weekend of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a three-hour, sword and sandles R-rated epic making more at the global box office than a well-received Toy Story flick is an incredible accomplishment. To put into perspective, there is, including The Odyssey, an equal amount of Toy Story films and R-rated films to make at least $1B. With so few new releases making noise, we thought we’d go a different direction on today’s Box Office Report and consider why that’s the case.
The primary reason behind this is that the rating simply stifles its potential returns. An R-rated film forces anybody younger than a junior in high school to require a legal guardian. While this seems obvious, it’s hard to underestimate just how much the enforcement of this law hurts the sale of a movie, especially compared to other films. Take this year, for example, Toy Story 5 is a billion dollar picture. Its legs, at least Stateside, were massively carried by the fact that during the summer, school is out. On a day-to-day basis, Toy Story 5 and Minions & Monsters, enough so to mitigate just how much Minions & Monsters disappointed performance wise, the family film genre represents a strong box office because families will take their kids to the movies during the day as an affordable way to get out of the heat, not to mention the fact that children tend to hyperfixate on a particular movie and rewatch it constantly. R-rated films don’t play that way because not only is your audience limited in scope to adults, the vast majority of adults have responsibilities that don’t allow ample visits to the cinema.
Similarly, there’s usually some level of quadrant appeal in a billion dollar film, or a niche so unfulfilled that it’ll overperform in a certain quadrant. In the industry the quadrants are considered female, male, under 25, over 25. This means universal appeal, in theory, not including more specific demographics, that you’re connecting with men and women of all ages. The vast majority of R-rated films just don’t speak to that kind of universality, considering what garners an R-rating. Theoretically speaking, a First Blood scores an R-rating because of its violence, and the action pictures carry a far more male-centric demographic. Films geared more toward women, let’s randomly use Olivia Wilde comedies as an example, such as Booksmart or The Invite, include exploration of sexuality which will land it an R-rating. Then you have a breakout hit like Obsession, but it’s still going to top out at around ~$500M as it speaks to the younger generation whose struggles are seen within the context of what the film has to say about dating, or a movie such as The Passion of the Christ can make $600M with its big Hollywood pedigree, but still tailoring toward an underserved demographic such as the evangelical religious aspect of the consumer, but still far too tailored to a niche, older demo.
The third factor is that R-rated films generally don’t find themselves with IP. It’s clear that when they do, considering the only two to this point were Joker and Deadpool and Wolverine to join the $1B Club, they can do well. But a studio won’t want to make high-end IP R-rated because its universal appeal is part of what drives high-end IP and the ancillary markets for film, such as merchandising and partnerships. However, an even bigger factor is our fourth and largest factory, still falling under the universality umbrella: international markets. With some major movie markets being far more regressive than others, an R-rated film is highly susceptible to censorship in said countries meaning that these films have less of an opportunity to make money.
Of course, like with any conversation with financial figures in 2026, the argument becomes ‘well, what about inflation!’ DSR/CBC doesn’t love this argument because it assumes all films equal in an equal opportunity environment outside of rising costs. In an era where home video wasn’t commonplace and it took a year for a film to show up at your local Hollywood Video, films stayed in theatres longer and thus had more opportunity to make money. Titanic, for example, had a 287-day theatrical window. The Odyssey, for example, is expected to be around 100 days exclusitivity before it goes on PVOD, and anybody can rent it from the convenience of their remote. That offers avenues to watch the film somewhat quickly, whereas a majority of films throughout history directly benefitted from an environment where you were forced to go to a theatre if you wanted any guarantee to eventually watch the film whatsoever. It also assumes that the habits of the moviegoers haven’t changed much. Take the current MCU as an encapsulation of the point. Many are saying that Avengers: Endgame adjusted for inflation made more on its opening weekend than Spider-Man: Brand New Day despite Spider-Man having a higher opening in total figure. Our argument is that it should have, obviously? Endgame came at the height of superheroes in the zeitgeist on the back of the entire MCU building to that specific moment whereas Spider-Man came after…Fantastic Four: The First Steps? The assumption that Spider-Man would make the exact same in 2026 as it would have in 2019 when the habits of the moviegoing audience were preconditioned to go to superhero films is extraordinarily out of touch, and it ultimately makes Spider-Man’s box office significantly more impressive.
Regardless, after a weekend where it finished in second and still made over $30M in its fourth weekend, The Odyssey sits less than $200M away from breaking the record for highest-grossing film in the history of the R-rating. This shouldn’t surprise too many people as an R-rated three-hour, half-black-and-white, half-color period piece biopic about a physicist starring a character actor best known for a British Netflix show in the lead role made $975M three years ago just off of the name of the director, and now a very accessible blockbuster about a beloved story that’s defined centuries is his next project? It was always easily clearing the threshold. By how much was the question, and now, with China anticipating at least $100M in returns, a box office that should be much higher in Japan than the movie about the making of the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and many weeks still left with 70MM IMAX selling out across the United States, this should break the record for highest-grossing R-rated film of all-time. The question becomes by how much.
Going from a billion dollar film to a likely $2B film, Spider-Man saw a 60% drop this week. However, DSR/CBC, who wrote in detail about the box office in last week’s report, believes you shouldn’t be too worried about a slightly larger-than-standard drop this week. When you open as high as Spider-Man did, you’re always due for a roller coaster level drop due to the sheer volume of people who rushed to go see it opening week. Its estimated second weekend made less than $20M fewer than the combined opening weekends of Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts*. The ~$145M domestic is a tremendous result for Marvel ahead of Avengers: Doomsday.
The two new releases finished third and fourth, but in an underwhelming variety. One Night Only made around $6M, which is along the same lines of Anyone But You, Gluck’s previous romcom, but a far cry from Easy A. Of course, Emma Stone is a far bigger star than Monica Barbaro and romcoms were far more popular fifteen years ago, but the make-or-break for this is its legs, and audience reception doesn’t seem quite as gudie. The lack of any actual sexuality in the sex purge movie probably doesn’t help its cause. In fourth, Super Troopers 3 brought back Farva to crickets. After the second opening to just $15M, this opening to a third of that figure. In the near ten years since the second Super Troopers movie, a franchise that has never provided massive box office returns, it has not seen a second-life on streaming. Has anybody asked for another Super Troopers movie? When was the last time Broken Lizard or anybody in it had any semblence of cultural relevancy?
The three family films we’ve covered extensively and The Invite complete the list of films that made at least $1M domestically this weekend. The Invite seems to be one of the biggest wins of the summer as it turned down a massive offer from Netflix to go to theatres, and as an R-rated comedy in 2026, made more than 10x its production budget. Olivia Wilde, welcome back from director purgatory after whatever Don’t Worry Darling was.
Next week is End of Oak Street as the major opener. While we could see this going either way with the run Anne Hathaway is on, we aren’t as bullish on it as maybe some others are. The artificial intelligence marketing fiasco is a damning indictment on how little Warner Bros understands the film they’re trying to market, and it losing a lot of its IMAX screens doesn’t exactly scream internal projections of a smash hit. There’s also the opening of The Rivals of Amziah King, which had great buzz out of festivals with a tremendous response for the Matthew McConaughey performance, but its small distributor and multi-year wait hasn’t built much anticipation. Expect the Odyssey and Spider-Man to continue to dominant.
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.