The Odyssey Just Became Christopher Nolan's Highest-Grossing Movie Ever — And It's Still Climbing

Coming into 2026, few movies carried as much momentum as The Odyssey, the IMAX-driven epic from director Christopher Nolan. And now, less than two months into its theatrical run, it has officially become the highest-grossing movie of his entire career.

According to the latest box office figures, The Odyssey has grossed $1.631 billion globally — blowing past every Nolan film that came before it, including the Oscar-sweeping Oppenheimer, which rode to nearly $1 billion and won seven Academy Awards. The new Homer adaptation is doing that number and a whole lot more, and it isn't done yet.

A Star-Studded Retelling of Homer's Epic

Nolan's take on the classic Greek poem is anchored by Matt Damon as Odysseus, the wandering king at the center of the story, with Tom Holland playing his son Telemachus and Anne Hathaway starring as Penelope. It marks Holland's first collaboration with Nolan, while both Damon and Hathaway previously worked with the director on Interstellar — Damon also had a key role in Oppenheimer.

The casting has been a major draw, but it's the filmmaking that has audiences lining up. The Odyssey continues to add new IMAX screenings, and the demand for 70MM showings is still remarkably high even though the film has been out for close to two months. That's the kind of staying power that separates a genuine event movie from a flash-in-the-pan release.

Closing In on a Universal Record

Here's where it gets really interesting for studio history buffs. If The Odyssey can pass $1.670 billion at the global box office — which it will almost certainly do before its run ends — it will defeat Jurassic World and become the highest-grossing movie of all time for Universal Pictures. Universal has been making movies for 114 years now, with hundreds of elite blockbusters in its catalog, and The Odyssey would be looking down on all of them.

That's a remarkable milestone for a studio that has produced franchises like Jurassic Park, Fast & Furious, Despicable Me and Minions. To have a prestige epic — a Greek mythology adaptation with poetry, tragedy and IMAX scale — outgross all of them would be fittingly unconventional for Nolan, whose career has been defined by betting big on theatrical and winning.

For millennial moviegoers who grew up watching Nolan's films evolve from Memento to The Dark Knight to Inception to Interstellar, this is a full-circle moment. The director who spent two decades proving cinema still matters on the biggest screen possible is now sitting on the biggest hit of his life — and he's still only getting warmed up.

The Odyssey is in theaters now, including premium IMAX and 70MM screenings. If you haven't seen it yet, you might want to catch it on the biggest screen you can find — because this is history in the making.