Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is set to become the biggest box office success of the director’s career.
The 55-year-old filmmaker will be celebrating after his epic adaptation of the celebrated work by Ancient Greek poet Homer broke records both domestically and internationally.
In the United States, the film earned $51 million on Friday and is predicted to make around $120 million across its opening weekend. That would make the Matt Damon-starring historical drama the biggest live action film of the year, behind only animated hits Toy Story 5 ($159 million) and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ($131 million) overall.
At the global box office, The Odyssey is expected to surpass 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises to give Nolan his biggest ever worldwide opening. Deadline expects the film to make $257.8 million globally, ahead of the $249 million banked by Nolan’s Batman sequel.
Once again, that would place it in third place overall in this year’s box office charts, behind Toy Story 5 which made $312 million worldwide and Super Mario Galaxy Movie which made $372.5 million worldwide.
The Odyssey, which was made for a reported budget of $250 million, has also given star Damon the biggest opening weekend of his career as a leading man.
Prior to the release of the film, some social media users had criticized the production for its casting.
In January, Tesla founder Elon Musk said Nolan had “lost his integrity” by casting Lupita Nyong’o as Helen in response to a user on X claiming the “ face that launched a thousand ships” was “fair skinned, blonde”.
Nyong’o dismissed that criticism by saying that the film’s cast is “representative of the world”.
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The Odyssey stars Damon as the hero Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as his wife Penelope and Tom Holland as their son Telemachus. Also featuring Zendaya as Athena, Charlize Theron as Calypso, Jon Bernthal as Menelaus and Benny Safdie as Agamemnon, it follows Odysseus along his perilous journey back home after the 10-year Trojan War.
It has been widely praised by critics, with The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey handing the film a five-star review and writing: “As a feat of pure adaptation, Nolan has achieved something I admittedly thought was near impossible.
His stamp is all over the film – this is intellectual, brutalist, muscular Hollywood fare – yet it never wavers in its commitment to, and comprehension of, its source text. There’s not a single decision here that’s been thoughtlessly made, nor that I imagine Nolan himself couldn’t easily defend, much to the imagined chagrin of certain lawless parts of the internet.”
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