The Odyssey keeps smashing box office records — and it’s not slowing down
Deadline’s new breakdown of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey pinpoints a weekday US box office surge — and the exact records and figures tell the fuller story.
Let’s talk about Christopher Nolan and his frankly ridiculous hot streak at the moment — specifically with his new epic, The Odyssey. Apparently, Nolan doesn’t just open a film anymore; he storms into the box office charts and starts rewriting records like it’s part of his job description.
Record-Smashing Week
This week, The Odyssey didn’t just turn heads, it left a crater. To start with, it hauled in $18.67 million on its first Monday — not only smashing Nolan’s own opening Monday from Oppenheimer ($12.67M) by miles, but also piping past this year’s earlier champ, Toy Story 5, which previously set the 2026 Monday high at $17.3M. That Monday haul puts Nolan’s film at number five in Universal’s all-time Mondays, trailing only Jurassic World, Super Mario Bros, Sing, and Fast & Furious 6. You know you’re doing well when the only ones ahead of you are CGI dinosaurs and an Italian plumber.
Then came Tuesday, and Nolan broke his own record again. $21.4 million — easily eclipsing The Dark Knight’s 2008 record of $20.8M for a Nolan film. For 2026, it’s now the year’s second best Tuesday, just shy of Toy Story 5’s $23.69M. It’s also Universal’s second best Tuesday ever, only losing out to Jurassic World’s $24.3M from 2015.
The Odyssey’s running domestic total through four days: $141 million
Big Totals and Big Screens
Add those daily numbers up and The Odyssey has clocked $141 million domestically in four days — about 48% higher than Oppenheimer managed in its first comparable stretch. Globally, the launch is even more impressive: $263.7 million, which happens to be the biggest worldwide opening of Nolan’s entire career.
If you fancy watching it in IMAX in New York or LA, good luck. Most of those evening showings are basically sold out for the foreseeable. No surprise there, really.
Looking Ahead: Next Weekend
Nolan’s film will keep all the IMAX and PLF screens for its second weekend — no sharing. Projections for the second weekend earnings are floating somewhere between $61.8M and $74M, which translates as a 40%-50% drop. That’s still no small feat, since that could rival or top the sophomore weekend numbers of both The Dark Knight ($75.1M) and The Dark Knight Rises ($62.1M).