Take a hike, Batman. Odysseus is the big dog now. This week, Christopher Nolan’s latest film, The Odyssey, crossed $1 billion at the global box office and, in a matter of days, it will pass both The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises to become the filmmaker’s highest-grossing film ever.
Going into this weekend, The Odyssey had grossed about $430 million in the US and $570 million overseas. That put it only about $82 million behind The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan’s previous highest-grossing film, and $10 million behind The Dark Knight. Which is just wild considering how big we all consider those two films to be and how massive Batman is as a box office draw.
But this cements that Christopher Nolan himself has become arguably an even bigger box office draw. Let’s not forget that a few years ago, he turned the story of the man who helped create the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer, into a near billion-dollar success (winning a few Oscars along the way). People didn’t line up for that because they love Oppenheimer. They lined up because they love Nolan and they know if Nolan thinks it’s a story worth telling, it’s a story worth watching. Plus, he does it on a scale only a handful of filmmakers have ever achieved.
In fact, with The Odyssey, he became the first Hollywood filmmaker to ever release an entire theatrical film in IMAX, which meant that audiences were willing to pay premium prices to see the movie. Maybe they paid $12 to see The Dark Knight. But they could’ve paid $30 to see The Odyssey. Some of that is inflation, of course, but it’s also Nolan’s reputation as well.
Oh, and the film hasn’t even opened in China or Japan yet. It opens August 14 in China and September 11 in Japan. Those are two massive markets that will send The Odyssey well above The Dark Knight Rises.
What could Nolan possibly do next to follow this up? We will wait patiently and see.
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