Christopher Nolan has done it again at the box office, before most people have even seen the film. His new epic, "The Odyssey," took in about $15 million from Thursday-night preview screenings, the strongest previews for any live-action movie so far this year and a head start on what looks like a very big opening weekend.
A record start
The preview haul topped the number Nolan's own "Oppenheimer" posted on its way to a blockbuster run, buoyed as that film was by premium large-format screens. On the strength of Thursday, trackers now project "The Odyssey" to open somewhere near $90 million to $100 million domestically, with a global weekend that could approach $200 million. A result in that range would rank as Nolan's biggest opening in well over a decade.
The scale of the bet
"The Odyssey" is a swing befitting Homer. Distributed by Universal and made on a budget reported around $250 million, it is a sprawling adaptation of the ancient Greek poem, with Nolan assembling a marquee cast for the journey of Odysseus home from the Trojan War. It is also a technical landmark: the production has been billed as the first feature shot entirely with IMAX cameras, a format Nolan has long championed and that has made his films events to be seen on the largest screens possible.
Why it matters
For a theatrical business still working to rebuild the habit of going out to the movies, a Nolan release remains one of the surest draws left, an original, non-franchise film that audiences will turn into an event. Strong previews for an adult-skewing, three-hour epic are a reassuring sign for studios betting that big-screen spectacle can still pull crowds. The weekend's actual numbers will come in over the next few days, but the early read is unambiguous: "The Odyssey" is off to the kind of start that Hollywood, and Los Angeles, still counts on Christopher Nolan to deliver.
