'The Odyssey' becomes the highest-grossing R-rated film in box-office history

Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" has become the highest-grossing R-rated film in box-office history, passing "Deadpool & Wolverine" after a five-week run that has made the $250 million adaptation of Homer's epic the biggest hit of the director's career.

Universal Pictures confirmed the milestone this week, saying the film's worldwide gross reached $1.352 billion, edging past the $1.338 billion worldwide total that "Deadpool & Wolverine" set in 2024. The studio's disclosure, posted to its NBCUniversal newsroom, marks the first time an original, non-franchise film has held the R-rated record since the modern ratings system took shape.

The numbers

"The Odyssey" opened domestically on July 17 to roughly $124 million, the biggest debut of Nolan's career, and crossed $1 billion globally by August 7 — about three weeks into its run. By the weekend of August 21, the film had earned $429.65 million domestically and $578.8 million internationally on its way to the $1.352 billion global total that put it ahead of "Deadpool & Wolverine." It remained in theaters through the following weekend, adding another $19.5 million domestically even as two new wide releases, "Insidious: Out of the Further" and the Jason Statham thriller "Mutiny," opened alongside it.

• Worldwide gross: $1.352 billion, ahead of "Deadpool & Wolverine's" $1.338 billion
• Production budget: roughly $250 million, recouped within three days of release
• Domestic opening weekend: approximately $124 million, a career best for Nolan
• Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 97%, with an A CinemaScore from opening-weekend audiences

Those figures place "The Odyssey" fourth among 2026's biggest global releases, and Universal says the film helped make it the first studio this year to cross $4 billion in worldwide box-office revenue. Weekend-to-weekend tracking data compiled by Comscore, the industry's standard measurement service, has shown the film holding the No. 1 or No. 2 domestic spot in every one of its five weekends in release.

How Nolan got here

The film reunites Nolan with Universal for the first time since 2023's "Oppenheimer," which won seven Academy Awards including best picture and best director. "The Odyssey" is by some distance his most expensive production: the studio committed roughly $250 million to a globe-spanning shoot that Nolan filmed almost entirely on 65mm and 70mm IMAX film stock, continuing his long-running resistance to digital cinematography. The cast is led by Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Tom Holland as Telemachus, Zendaya as Athena, Robert Pattinson as the suitor Antinous and Charlize Theron as Calypso — an ensemble the studio says produced career box-office highs for several of its members.

Industry analysts had questioned whether an R-rated, dialogue-heavy adaptation of a three-thousand-year-old poem could draw the same audiences as Nolan's more overtly commercial work, such as "Tenet" or "Interstellar." The film's reviews — described by Universal as the best of Nolan's career — and a 97% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes suggest the concern proved largely unfounded, though the record is also a function of a broader summer rebound at North American theaters, where the 2026 season generated an estimated $4.4 billion domestically, well ahead of 2025's pace over the same months.

Who is affected

The record reshapes the ranking of R-rated films at the global box office: "The Odyssey" now sits above "Deadpool & Wolverine" ($1.338 billion), "Joker" ($1.078 billion), "Oppenheimer" ($975.8 million) and "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — Infinity Castle" ($793.4 million). For Universal, the film becomes one of three of its 2026 releases to cross $1 billion worldwide, cementing a year in which the studio has led its rivals at the box office. For exhibitors, the film's unusually long run in the top two of the weekend chart — even as new franchise entries opened against it — has been read as evidence that adult-oriented, star-driven films can still anchor a summer slate rather than simply supplementing it.

The result also resets the internal ranking of Nolan's own filmography. "The Odyssey" has now surpassed "Oppenheimer" as the highest-grossing release of his career, a distinction that had briefly belonged to the 2023 biopic after it became the first Nolan film to cross $900 million worldwide. Nolan has released a film roughly every two to three years since "Following" in 1998, and "The Odyssey" represents his first adaptation of a classical text, following an alternating pattern of original screenplays ("Inception," "Tenet") and historical or literary source material ("Dunkirk," "Oppenheimer").

Universal has largely let the numbers speak, framing each milestone through successive newsroom posts rather than public remarks from Nolan himself, who has historically stayed out of box-office commentary. Rival filmmakers and stars took more visible notice online: Ryan Reynolds, star of the film "The Odyssey" just dethroned, publicly congratulated the production on the record. Trade coverage of the milestone, including from Forbes, framed the achievement as evidence that theatrical audiences remain willing to turn out in large numbers for original material carrying a mature rating, provided the scale and craftsmanship match a traditional summer tentpole.

What happens next

Universal has already set a home-viewing date for the film, announcing that "The Odyssey" will arrive on premium video-on-demand platforms — including Apple TV, Prime Video, Fandango at Home and YouTube Movies & TV — on November 17, alongside 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD releases, according to a follow-up report on the studio's plans. The film is expected to remain in a shrinking number of theaters through the fall as Universal turns attention to its next tentpole releases, while awards strategists have already begun including "The Odyssey" in early best-picture conversation ahead of the winter nominations season.