Thirteen weeks in, Nolan's Odyssey earned more per cinema than the new Sorkin and Cruise films
Twelve 70mm projectors, a 13-week-old epic and two new star vehicles. Divide the takings by the cinemas and the weekend's chart reads very differently.
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey opened on 17 July 2026. Over the weekend of 9–11 October, its 13th in release, it was back in the US top ten: $2.15 million from 560 cinemas, up more than 50% on the weekend before, taking its domestic total to just shy of $623 million.
The reason for the bounce is mechanical, and very Nolan. After a week away, The Odyssey got its IMAX screens back, including 12 North American venues still running the IMAX 70mm film prints it was shot for. Tom Cruise's Digger had taken those screens for its opening and handed them back after one weekend.
"After a week hiatus, The Odyssey reclaimed lucrative 70MM Imax prints for a nearly 60% jump."
Row ten of the box office table
The weekend's headlines went elsewhere: Blumhouse's Other Mommy opened at No 1 with a D+ CinemaScore, and Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning opened in fifth. The Odyssey was the last line of the top ten. Divide each film's gross by the number of cinemas showing it, though, and the last line moves up to second.
Here is the weekend per cinema, on final figures where they are in:
- Other Mommy: $27.8 million from 3,365 cinemas, about $8,260 each. New, horror, No 1.
- The Odyssey: $2.15 million from 560 cinemas, about $3,840. Week 13.
- Verity: $12 million from 3,572, about $3,360.
- Resident Evil: $8.56 million from 3,085, about $2,780.
- Heart of the Beast: $7.44 million from 3,365, about $2,210.
- The Social Reckoning: $5.5 million (Sony's estimate) from 2,606, about $2,100.
- Digger: $3.2 million from 3,321, about $960.
The only film doing better business per screen was a brand-new horror on its opening weekend. Everything below The Odyssey was newer and playing in five to six times as many cinemas.
Read more: Well, that stung — The Social Reckoning is a major box office face-plant
Sorkin and Cruise, cinema by cinema
The Social Reckoning is Sorkin's follow-up to The Social Network, with Jeremy Strong taking over as Mark Zuckerberg. Forecasts had it at $7–8 million; it got $5.5 million, a B- CinemaScore and fifth place. It played in more than four times as many cinemas as The Odyssey and made almost half as much in each of them.
Digger is worse. It opened on 2 October to about $8 million, his lowest opening in 19 years, since Lions for Lambs in 2007. In its second weekend it fell 60% to $3.2 million, $14.4 million in total. That is under $1,000 a cinema, and The Odyssey made almost four times as much per screen. On six times fewer cinemas, Nolan's film finished barely $1 million behind Cruise's.
A three-month-old film on 560 screens out-earned Tom Cruise's new one, screen for screen, almost four to one.
To be fair to Digger, it lost its IMAX screens to The Odyssey, which is rather the point. IMAX gave a new Tom Cruise film one weekend, then handed the screens back to a 13-week-old Nolan, and the audience turned up to prove that right.
The 70mm audience
There are only a few dozen cinemas in the world that can still project IMAX 70mm film, and London's BFI IMAX is one of them. Nolan shot The Odyssey for exactly those projectors, and a chunk of his audience has apparently been waiting for them to come back. The mood on r/oscarrace after the weekend was gloomy about nearly everything else on the chart:
"All around depressing weekend with many films sadly bombing but at least The Odyssey is back baby!"
— a commenter on r/oscarrace
Universal didn't need a new release to post the second-best average of the weekend. It needed the projectors back.
Read more: Tom Cruise’s Digger just had an even worse second weekend at the box office