Christopher Nolan's Odyssey just crossed $1 billion, and it's 3 days from becoming his biggest movie ever
It needs $73 million more to pass The Dark Knight Rises. At its current pace, that's a matter of days, not weeks.
"The Odyssey" crossed $1 billion globally on August 8, becoming the fifth movie of 2026 to hit that mark, after "Spider-Man: Brand New Day," "Toy Story 5," "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie," and "Michael." It's also the first Christopher Nolan film to reach $1 billion since "The Dark Knight Rises" in 2012, and only his third ever. It needs about $73 million more to pass "The Dark Knight Rises" ($1.081 billion) and become his highest-grossing movie of all time.
This isn't the kind of movie that usually does this. It's a nearly three-hour adult drama adapted from a 3,000-year-old poem, not a franchise sequel or a superhero reboot. Its opening weekend alone was $263.7 million globally, Nolan's biggest ever, ahead of "The Dark Knight Rises." Maybe the real signal here is that audiences will still show up in huge numbers for a serious, difficult film if the director has enough trust built up. That's a rarer thing at this scale than it used to be.
Watch the next week or two of box office numbers, since $73 million at this film's current pace could close out in days rather than weeks. Once it happens, Nolan becomes his own biggest competitor, holding both the record and the film that just broke it.