Nolan's The Odyssey Box Office Day 3: Crosses ₹2,540 crore worldwide, beats Oppenheimer opening

Matt Damon and Tom Holland steer Nolan’s ambitious gamble to a thunderous global debut, silencing every box-office sceptic. Christopher Nolan’s mythic action epic The Odyssey is already being hailed as one of the filmmaker’s biggest achievements, with the film being even better and bigger than Oscar-winning Oppenheimer.

While the 2023 historical drama rewrote box-office records and earned Nolan and his longtime producing partner, Emma Thomas, the Academy Award for Best Picture, The Odyssey is being celebrated as an even more ambitious fusion of spectacle, emotion, and cinematic craftsmanship.

Also read: The Odyssey box office collection day 1The Odyssey’s worldwide opening weekend is nothing short of epic

If opening weekends are Hollywood's preferred measure of cultural momentum, The Odyssey has arrived with the force of a modern myth. According to Sacnilk, Christopher Nolan's epic has amassed an estimated $264.1 million worldwide (more than ₹2,540 crore) in its first three days, eclipsing its reported $250 million production budget before the end of its debut weekend.

For a filmmaker whose movies increasingly function as cinematic events rather than mere releases, the result feels less like a surprise than the latest affirmation of Nolan’s singular box-office pull. Universal Pictures is also said to have spent roughly $125 million on the film’s global marketing campaign -a wager that, judging by the film's trajectory, appears poised to pay for itself within days.

The numbers tell another story as well: audiences are not simply watching The Odyssey; they are seeking it out in the format Nolan designed it for. Billed as the first feature filmed entirely with IMAX cameras, the film drew $29.6 million from IMAX screens in North America and $51.8 million worldwide, delivering the biggest opening weekend in the format’s history.

More remarkable still, the mere 41 IMAX theatres worldwide capable of projecting the film in 70 mm preferred presentation have delivered $6.3 million on their own. So robust is the demand that these screens will continue to prioritise The Odyssey over the coming three weeks, even after the release of Destin Daniel Cretton’s long-awaited superhero spectacle, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, on July 31.

How The Odyssey outperformed Oppenheimer?

The Odyssey has comfortably outpaced the opening weekend performance of Christopher Nolan's previous blockbuster, Oppenheimer. While Cillian Murphy’s biographical drama debuted with a strong $174 million worldwide over its first three days in July 2023, Christopher Nolan’s latest epic has stormed past that benchmark by a significant margin.

The commanding start underscores not only the growing global anticipation surrounding Nolan’s films but also the director’s unmatched ability to turn original, filmmaker-driven spectacles into major theatrical events. While long-term box office performance will ultimately depend on audience reception and word of mouth, its record-breaking debut has given Nolan’s yet another brilliant start at the worldwide box office.

But will it dominate the award season the way Oppenheimer did, winning seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director? For that, we need to wait and watch!