Audiences love The Odyssey: CinemaScore and Rotten Tomatoes audience score leave critics behind
Following its theatrical debut, opening-night CinemaScore polling and Rotten Tomatoes audience data show Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey playing even better with moviegoers than with critics.
Here we go again: Christopher Nolan drops a monster of a film – this time an adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey – and the crowds are not just showing up, they’re outdoing the critics for sheer enthusiasm. You’d think with nearly three hours, an ancient source text, and an R rating, audiences might hesitate. Not so. They’re loving it even more than the critics, and it’s making for one of those opening weekends people in the industry will be dissecting for years.
Critics Rate It Highly… But the Public Goes One Better
On Rotten Tomatoes, critics have been practically falling over themselves to heap praise on Nolan’s latest, landing The Odyssey with a swollen 95% Tomatometer score. As impressive as that is, it turns out the real story is just above it: the audience Popcornmeter is at a frankly wild 97%. That might sound like a quibble – two percentage points – but anyone who follows Rotten Tomatoes knows it’s rare for audiences to outpace critical consensus on something this hyped.
There’s more. Those CinemaScore exit polls, which can make or break a film’s future at the box office, delivered it an ‘A’ grade on opening night. In CinemaScore terms that’s not just ‘good’ – that’s ‘drop everything and tell your mates’. It pretty much guarantees the film’s going to stick around in cinemas for a while.
Who’s In It, and Who’s Watching?
Nolan hasn’t gone cheap with the cast:
- Matt Damon as Odysseus (yes, really),
- Tom Holland,
- Anne Hathaway,
- Robert Pattinson,
- Lupita Nyong'o,
- Zendaya.
It’s an R-rated beast of a spectacle, and the numbers don’t lie: $124.5 million (domestic) on opening weekend. That’s Nolan’s biggest since The Dark Knight Rises back in 2012, and for 2026, it’s the third-biggest opening yet.
With a film this beefy, you might imagine the audience would skew older, but Nolan’s gone broad here: 56% male, and half the tickets sold went to 18-to-34-year-olds. That’s not just legacy fans – that’s new blood mixed in.
Big Gamble, Bigger Bet
It’s not subtle money, either. Universal poured $250 million into production and another $125 million into global marketing. Obviously, they’re banking on more than just an opening sprint; with not much competition for the next few weeks, Universal’s hoping people keep coming for the spectacle – especially in IMAX, where demand is off the chart.
IMAX boss Rich Gelfond is already putting The Odyssey in what he calls a 'rarified group of instant classic blockbusters', apparently expecting it to push the brand into new territory.