Opening Weekend Forecast: £8M – £10M
Theatrical Total Forecast: £45M – £55M
Cinema advertising company Pearl & Dean has released their predicted opening range for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, opening in the U.K. and Ireland this weekend.
Christopher Nolan is among today’s most commercially successful directors and one of the few whose name alone can carry marquee value. Over the past two decades he has delivered a run of major box-office hits, from the increasingly profitable Dark Knight trilogy—Batman Begins (£16.9 million), The Dark Knight (£49.8 million) and The Dark Knight Rises (£56.6 million)—to ambitious originals including Interstellar (£21.8 million), Inception (£35.9 million), and Dunkirk (£56.9 million). The closest thing he has seen to a miss was Tenet, which took £17.6 million in September 2020—still a strong result for a wholly original film, let alone one released slap bang in the middle of the Covid pandemic. His follow-up Oppenheimer then became the biggest release of his career to date, grossing £59.8 million and becoming the U.K.’s highest-grossing biopic of all time.
Nolan has a vast and loyal fanbase who will come out to support his films and do so in a big way. An early proponent of Imax, his films routinely over-index on higher-priced screens; add to that the fact that The Odyssey is the first film shot entirely with Imax cameras. Early demand has been strong, with ticketing the U.K.’s largest cinema screen, located at the BFI Imax, crashed after selling £750,000 worth of tickets in its first 24 hours and has scheduled round-the-clock screenings to cope with demand.
However, Nolan die-hards and cinema purists alone will not carry The Odyssey to the profits necessary to justify its $250 million budget. While Nolan has never struggled crossing over to general audiences, The Odyssey’s mainstream prospects are strengthened by a heavyweight cast. This includes Matt Damon, Robert Pattinson, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, and Charlize Theron, all of whom have proven box-office pedigree.
However, one star missing is a certain pink plaything by the name of Barbie. The Barbenheimer phenomenon was a major driver of Oppenheimer’s success, turning the film into a social-media event no prognosticators could have predicted. The Odyssey, on the other hand, will have no such leg up, yet it will have to contend with the same 15 age-rating as Oppenheimer. A 15 certificate generally lowers a film’s box-office ceiling by siphoning out young adult crowds. While some films manage to break through this barrier, they are usually franchise- or IP-driven, like Joker (£58.4 million) and Deadpool and Wolverine (£57.9 million). That said, The Odyssey is a form of IP in its own right as one of the oldest stories ever told, and one that has inexorably shaped modern culture. While audiences may not be picking up a copy of Homer’s poem, they will be familiar with the story in ways they may not even realise.
Comparable swords-and-sandals epics, including Gladiator (£31.3 million), Gladiator II (£32 million) and even The Odyssey’s pre-cursor Troy (£18 million) in 2004, have tended to do well in the U.K.. The Odyssey has faced several pre-release controversies—ranging from American accents and the use of the word “Dad” to the absence of Greek actors and racist complaints about Lupita Nyong’o’s casting as Helen of Troy—though most appear confected or overblown. While most audiences are unlikely to be fussed about this online discourse, some may be wary of engaging with another potentially exhausting culture-war flashpoint.
Nolan and his crew are battling such headwinds straight on thanks to unanimous praise in early critical reactions and a clear momentum building for the film. We remain confident The Odyssey will rank among the biggest films of the summer, the year, and Nolan’s career.
Comparators: Oppenheimer (£59.8 Million), Dunkirk (£56.9 Million), Gladiator II (£32 million)
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