Astonishingly, the opening weekend screenings for The Odyssey 70mm IMAX shows have sold out a year in advance. If anyone ever needed proof, this is it. Christopher Nolan is a franchise unto himself.
It isn't every day that tickets go on sale for a movie a year in advance. Or every decade, for that matter. But Universal knew what they were doing here. They announced that tickets for the 70 mm IMAX screenings of Christopher Nolan's next film, The Odyssey, would be available on Thursday, July 17, exactly one year ahead of the film's premiere.
The strategy worked, as less than 24 hours later, the opening weekend was sold out. In somewhat depressing news, many of those tickets are being scalped for ridiculous profits. I'm as big a fan of Nolan's films as anyone - how many times have you watched Following, huh?- but I'm not paying more than the already less-than-lovely price of $25 to see it. It certainly proves one thing. Right now, there's no bigger franchise than Christopher Nolan.
Christopher Nolan is box office platinum
We're off the gold standard here, folks. What else can you say about a filmmaker who decides that a three-hour-long biopic about a physicist who died nearly fifty years ago would make a great movie? Turns out Nolan was right, as Oppenheimer grossed an astonishing $975 worldwide. Similarly themed films, A Beautiful Mind, Hidden Figures, and The Imitation Game, were all box office hits, but their combined take didn't match Nolan's triumphant film. Throw in The Darkest Hour's $151 million, and you're still short.
Oppenheimer may be his crowning achievement, at least until The Odyssey arrives, but it's only his third-highest grossing film. Both The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises pulled in over $1 billion at the box office. The initial film in his superhero trilogy, Batman Begins, was considered a major success as it grossed $356 million. It wasn't in the box office realm of Spider-Man, but it repaired the damage done to the DC franchise.
Ever since the relative failure of 2006's The Prestige, Nolan has been on fire when it comes to ticket sales. I say relative, as his film about rival magicians is easily one of his best, but it "only" grossed $104 million on a budget of $40 million. I can only think that most of the audience wanted the sequel to Gotham's protector.
After that, Nolan was perfect at the box office. He snuck the brilliant Inception between his Bat films, raking in $826 million with the puzzle within a puzzle within a - you get the idea, you've seen it. He followed up his superhero trilogy with another deep dive into sci-fi, the $641 million Interstellar. Nothing like saving the world and making a few bucks while you're at it.
His follow-up to that was the second-highest-grossing war film in the West, Dunkirk. Three Chinese films have passed it, and handily, but were barely released outside of mainland China. Juggling three storylines across three intersecting timelines in just one hour and 47 minutes, Nolan managed to wrest true humanity from the grim story of survival. And turned a handsome $528 million at the box office while doing it.
And now we reach the problematic Tenet. At $366 million, it's his lowest-grossing film since The Prestige. I say problematic, because the audience has been so divided in their opinion of the film. It's a dense, complex film, to be sure. Imagine Inception as a fifth-grade level introduction to science. Now jump up to a college-level course, and you have an idea of the complexity of Tenet.
With The Odyssey, Nolan will return to a more straightforward storyline. Or will he? We are talking about the man who has crafted more cinematic puzzle boxes than Pinhead, after all. Will we see flashbacks to the Trojan War? We already know from the teaser that we'll see his son, played by Tom Holland, quizzing Jon Bernthal, who is likely playing Antinous, Odysseus' main rival.
Unlike 2024's The Return, which focused solely on the human story, we're getting the full gods and monsters treatment from Nolan. Headed by Matt Damon, the cast includes Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong'o, John Leguizamo, and Charlize Theron, among others. I find it hilarious that this question has been posed on Reddit: Can Matt Damon do accents? Dude, unless everyone speaks their lines in the appropriate dialect of their city-state, it doesn't matter. Just as long as we keep Kevin Costner away from it, we're good.
I have a feeling that when it comes time to rank all the movies about our pal Odysseus, Nolan's film will be at the top, even above the excellent 1954 Ulysses, starring Kirk Douglas, and the Coen Brothers adaptation, O Brother, Where Art Thou? Unlike the Jurassic franchise, it's hard to go wrong with the story of The Odyssey, no matter who tells it.
As for those ticket sales, we're good. Just wait until the following Monday and see it, if you must go the full 70 mm IMAX route. Or just see it on a normal giant screen; it's not an IMAX-only release. For me, I'm waiting. I had to wait three weeks to catch Oppenheimer, but it was worth it.