Christopher Nolan’s epic has crossed $1.68 billion worldwide, breaking a record that stood since 2015.
Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” has become the highest-grossing film in the 114-year history of Universal Pictures. The studio announced the milestone on Saturday, September 12, 2026, with the Matt Damon-led epic reaching about $1.68 billion worldwide after nine weekends in theaters.
According to Variety, the film’s total breaks down to $601.2 million domestically and $1.083 billion internationally. That figure clears the $1.677 billion set by “Jurassic World” in 2015, the record it just overtook. “Jurassic World” still holds a higher domestic gross at around $653 million, but “The Odyssey” pulled ahead on the strength of its overseas run, a rare feat for a film that is neither a sequel nor part of an established franchise.
The pace of the achievement is part of what makes it notable. The film has been in theaters for less than two months and is still drawing crowds, an unusually long stretch of strong ticket sales in an era when most releases fade within weeks.
The Odyssey box office records keep stacking up
The Universal record is one of many the film has collected. According to Deadline, “The Odyssey” is now the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time in unadjusted worldwide receipts, passing “Deadpool & Wolverine,” and the biggest earner in IMAX history. It is also the first film that is neither a sequel nor a remake to gross more than $1 billion outside North America since 2009, a gap of nearly two decades.
The film’s international reach has been especially wide. According to Deadline, it stands as Universal’s highest-grossing release of all time in 45 individual markets, including Australia, France, Italy, India and Korea. Domestically, it sits among only 18 films ever to cross the $601 million mark before inflation adjustment, and it ranks as the second-highest-grossing film of 2026 in North America and worldwide, behind only “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”
For Nolan, the numbers mark a career high. The film is his highest-grossing release, ahead of “The Dark Knight Rises,” and pushes his career total past $7 billion worldwide. It is also the highest-grossing film of Matt Damon’s, Anne Hathaway’s and Robert Pattinson’s careers. The movie showed remarkable staying power, returning to the top of the global box office in its eighth weekend while dropping only 9 percent domestically, a sign that word of mouth kept new audiences coming.
How Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey was made
Behind the record is one of the most ambitious productions of Nolan’s career. According to Wikipedia, the movie was made on an estimated $250 million budget and is the first feature ever shot entirely on IMAX 70mm cameras. Nolan worked on it for close to two years and filmed in real locations around the world rather than leaning on studio sets and digital backdrops
Demand for the format has matched the scale of the filmmaking. Screenings in IMAX 70mm sold so well that the format’s window was extended into September, and some premium-format pre-sales were released as much as a year in advance. The film premiered in London in July 2026 before its wide theatrical release, and drew critical acclaim for Nolan’s direction, along with some debate over how far it strayed from Homer’s original text.
The story itself is an adaptation of the ancient Greek poem, following Odysseus and his long, difficult journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War. The cast is stacked with recognizable names, including Damon, Tom Holland, Hathaway, Pattinson, Samantha Morton, Zendaya and Charlize Theron.
The milestone caps a dominant year for the studio. According to Deadline, Universal leads all major studios in 2026 with roughly $4.92 billion in global ticket sales and about 26 percent of the market. It was the first studio this year to cross both $3 billion internationally and $4 billion worldwide.
Donna Langley, chairman of NBCUniversal Entertainment, called the film one of the most ambitious and brilliantly executed in cinematic history. The record also deepens a partnership between Nolan and Universal that began after the director left Warner Bros. in 2021. The first film from that pairing, “Oppenheimer,” grossed nearly $1 billion worldwide and won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and “The Odyssey” has now carried the collaboration to an even higher peak.
