Odysseus (Matt Damon) on Calypso’s island in ‘The Odyssey’Image via Universal Pictures
After the colossal success of Oppenheimer back in 2023, it’s fair to say that coming into the year, The Odyssey was one of the most anticipated movies of 2026. The film is already shattering records, both at the box office and over on Rotten Tomatoes, where it holds scores of 94% from critics and 97% from audiences, making it the highest-rated movie of Nolan’s career. Critics and fans are already praising the many great performances of The Odyssey as well, with both Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway expected to earn Best Lead Actor and Actress nominations, and there will also likely be plenty of Supporting nods to go around. With a reported $250 million budget, The Odyssey needed well over $500 million — closer to $750 million — to break even, but this is proving to be no issue at all for Nolan’s new historical epic.
After historic first and second weekends at the box office, The Odyssey currently sits at a box office total of around $652 million, with more earnings pouring in by the day. The film has now reached a stretch where it’s passing some of the most iconic movies ever made at the box office, and the latest to fall victim to The Odyssey’s box office onslaught is The Martian. Ridley Scott’s highest-grossing sci-fi movie wrapped up its global box office run with around $630 million, which is now well in The Odyssey’s rear-view mirror. Some of Scott’s movies would certainly be highest in the box office standings when accounting for inflation — he’s been directing unforgettable sci-fi features for nearly 50 years now — but this is yet another win for Nolan in the box office column, who continues to make a strong case for one of the greatest directors of all time.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
What Is Christopher Nolan’s Next Movie?
Christopher Nolan has not yet announced what his next movie will be, but he has confirmed that he’ll be making movies for 10 more years, so there’s little to no chance The Odyssey will be his last movie. It’s no secret that making The Odyssey took quite a toll on all involved — it was the first film shot entirely on IMAX cameras — but Nolan seems to be immune from burnout. After praising recent horror hits like Obsession, fans have begun to speculate that a horror film could be on the horizon for Nolan, and he has expressed interest in the genre, should he come up with a good idea.
Check out The Odyssey in theaters now and stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of the film.
