Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey Just Stole A Major Box Office Record From Jurassic World
by Ryan Scott · /FilmAdd SlashFilm on Google:
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Christopher Nolan has officially taken Universal Pictures to a new high at the box office. "The Odyssey" has been on a tear ever since it hit theaters back in July. It's slowing down a bit, but the continued demand for IMAX and premium format screenings has kept Nolan's latest comfortably on the global charts. Now, it's managed to overtake one of the biggest franchise blockbusters ever made on the all-time charts.
"The Odyssey" added $34.4 million globally over the weekend, its ninth overall, including $7.4 million domestically. That was good enough for third place overall and gives Nolan's movie a current running total of $1.68 billion worldwide. With that, it has outgrossed 2015's "Jurassic World" ($1.67 billion), one of the most successful legacy sequels ever. At the time of its release, the long-awaited fourth "Jurassic Park" movie had the biggest opening weekend of all time, en route to becoming the third-biggest movie ever for a brief period.
For 11 years, it's stood tall as Universal's highest-grossing movie ever. No longer. Now, that record belongs to Nolan and his widely acclaimed adaptation of Homer's epic. "The Odyssey" had already stolen a major record from Marvel's "Deadpool & Wolverine," becoming the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time. The film also recently passed Marvel's 2012 mega-tentpole "The Avengers" at the box office, so its cap is lousy with feathers at this point.
Most impressively, Nolan has turned a non-franchise, three-hour, R-rated epic into a towering box office smash hit, one that has managed to overtake some of the biggest franchise movies ever made. It runs in defiance of much of Hollywood studio logic that has permeated the business for the last 20 years or so.
Jurassic World has surrendered its box office crown to The Odyssey
Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" surpassing the record set by "Jurassic World" doesn't take inflation into account, but it does represent a bit of a shift in the tides in terms of audience taste. Upon its arrival, director Colin Trevorrow's revival of the "Jurassic" movie franchise was a watershed moment for multigenerational nostalgia. Both kids who grew up watching "Jurassic Park" at home and the adults who made it a hit in the first place all rallied around the sequel in record numbers.
Case in point: "Jurassic World" set the record as the fastest movie to make $1 billion after opening to an astonishing $208.8 million in theaters stateside, which was itself a record in that day and age. It's also one of a very small number of movies that's made more than $100 million in its second weekend in North America, becoming a true pop culture sensation in the process. On top of all that, the film helped cement Chris Pratt as a bonafide Hollywood star following his turn in Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy" in 2014.
This then led to a massive continuation of the larger "Jurassic" franchise, with 2018's "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" ($1.3 billion), 2022's "Jurassic World Dominion" ($1 billion), and 2025's "Jurassic World Rebirth" ($869.1 million) all following. The returns diminished, to be certain, but the property is still a cash cow any studio would be happy to have. Moreover, "Jurassic World" retains a unique box office record to this day — the biggest theatrical opening for a non-Marvel, non-"Star Wars" film ever — and even Christopher Nolan couldn't take that away from it. So, for all the cynicism around its follow-ups, there's no denying the first "Jurassic World" movie was a major cultural touchstone.
Christopher Nolan and Universal Pictures have an incredibly fruitful partnership
The era of big franchises being the be all, end all in Hollywood leaving room for little else does seem to be getting farther away in the rearview mirror. The success of movies like "Obsession" and "Project Hail Mary" in 2026 have further proven audiences have an appetite for non-franchise fare.
As it relates to Christopher Nolan, he's in a class all his own. Nolan is the biggest movie star on the planet, and his partnership with Universal Pictures has been particularly fruitful. Nolan spent the bulk of his career at Warner Bros. for years, making both movies like "The Dark Knight" and non-franchise fare like "Inception" (which remains one of the biggest original box office hits ever). However, after the studio and filmmaker got into over the release of "Tenet" in 2020, Nolan left WB for Universal.
Their first collaboration came in 2023 with "Oppenheimer," which was the biggest biopic ever at the box office until "Michael" took the crown this year. It made an astounding $977.4 million globally, going on to win Best Picture at the Oscars. So, when Nolan decided he wanted to make "The Odyssey," Universal happily put up the incredibly large $250 million production budget to make it a reality. That proved to be money very well spent.
Now sitting at number 12 on the all-time charts, "The Odyssey" will soon pass "Inside Out 2" ($1.698 billion). Whether or not it has the juice to pass "Zootopia 2" ($1.86 billion) to get into the top 10 globally remains to be seen. But no matter what, at this point, it's cemented its place in the cinema history books.