Welldoneidn / Shutterstock.com
The Odyssey was already a massive hit. Now it’s got a real shot at becoming one of the biggest movies ever made, period. The film hasn’t even opened in China yet — and when it does, nearly 800 IMAX screens will be showing it.
IMAX China plans to hand over most of its screen network to Christopher Nolan’s epic when it debuts in mainland China on August 14, roughly a month after its US premiere. That’s an enormous commitment for a single film, even by blockbuster standards.
Nolan and star Matt Damon are set to walk the red carpet at the China National Film Museum in Beijing on July 30. It’ll be the first-ever commercial film red-carpet event held at the government-run museum — a detail that says a lot about how seriously China is treating this release.
The Numbers So Far
As of this writing, ten days after its July 17 release, The Odyssey has pulled in $652 million worldwide. It’s well on pace to cross the billion-dollar mark. If Elon Musk and the “go woke, go broke” crowd had money on this film flopping, they’d have lost badly.
The film opened to $264 million globally over its debut weekend. Domestically, it’s held up even better than expected — its second weekend brought in $90 million, just a 27% drop from opening weekend. That’s a record-low second-weekend decline for any film that opened above $100 million.
Should it pass $1.1 billion, The Odyssey would become the highest-grossing film of Nolan’s career, edging out The Dark Knight Rises. There’s another record in play too: the largest R-rated release ever, a title currently held by Deadpool & Wolverine at $1.33 billion from 2024.
Part of what’s driving this is the format itself. The Odyssey was shot entirely in IMAX 70mm — the first film ever to do so. No other movie in history has had quite this kind of premium large-format advantage, and that’s almost certainly influencing IMAX China’s decision to go all-in on screen commitments.
“I’m expecting a very large majority of our entire network, if not all of our network, that first week will be playing The Odyssey,” IMAX China CEO Daniel Manwaring told Variety. “We haven’t seen enthusiasm for a film like this in quite some time.”
According to Manwaring, Nolan’s popularity in China has been building for years, to the point where he’s become “bigger than any movie star” in the country.
“Nolan is so big in China, and his following is not just enormous but extremely sticky. These are fans that are lifelong… diehard.”
Chasing the $2 Billion Club
This puts The Odyssey in serious conversation to hit $2 billion at the box office — a mark only seven films have ever reached. In order of total gross: Avatar, Avengers: Endgame, Avatar: The Way of Water, Titanic, Ne Zha 2 (a Chinese production), Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and Avengers: Infinity War.
To even crack the top ten highest-grossing films of all time, The Odyssey needs to hit $1.698 billion — the bar set by Inside Out 2 last year.
Two other films sit in the top ten without having crossed $2 billion: Spider-Man: No Way Home and Zootopia 2. Spider-Man’s sequel, Brand New Day, might join that conversation too, once it opens this weekend.
How This Compares to Nolan’s Past China Releases
For context: Oppenheimer, Nolan’s Best Picture winner, made just $9 million in China over its first five days and finished with barely $20 million total there. His biggest China hit remains 2014’s Interstellar, which brought in $139 million — still considered a modern classic in the region.
Given how global, historic, and action-driven The Odyssey is compared to Oppenheimer, it should comfortably beat those numbers. And China isn’t even the last stop — the film still hasn’t opened in South Korea (August 5) or Japan (September 11). A winter IMAX rerelease also seems likely, probably timed ahead of an early 2027 awards push.
The post-COVID Hollywood box office record in China belongs to Avatar: The Way of Water, which pulled in roughly $246 million — a number that reflects both that franchise’s massive Chinese fanbase and the format advantage IMAX screens provide.
F9 sits just behind that at $215 million, with Godzilla vs. Kong trailing at $188 million.
Based on how Manwaring’s talking, it sounds like he thinks The Odyssey lands right in that neighborhood — maybe higher.
A Crowded Weekend Ahead
The Odyssey’s box office dominance won’t go unchallenged for long, though. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is tracking toward a worldwide opening weekend north of $800 million, which would make it the second-biggest opening in history, behind only Avengers: Endgame’s $1.2 billion debut.
Whether that dents The Odyssey’s momentum domestically remains to be seen, but China’s massive IMAX rollout suggests this film’s global run is far from finished.
