The brutal collection of ‘The Hate’ confirms that the most profitable franchise of the moment is not Marvel or DC: it is Christopher Nolan
‘The Odyssey’ has raised figures in its first weekend that are a true record for Christopher Nolan. The most significant thing, numbers aside, is that with this achievement he not only reaffirms himself as a prominent director in the league of great authors loved by the public and critics, in the style of Spielberg, but he competes directly in the field of sequels, blockbusters, Marvel and DC adaptations (where he has already made his name) and big-budget animation. Nolan already behaves (financially, at least) like a franchise. The numbers. The Nolan’s adaptation of ‘The Odyssey’ from Homer raised $124.5 million in its three opening days in the United States. On a global scale, the figure amounts to $264.1 million, the best worldwide opening of Nolan’s entire career, ahead of the $249 million achieved by ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ in 2012. Why it happens. Beyond the quality of the production and the expectation it has raised, it must be taken into account to explain the success that the premiere was strongly supported in premium rooms. IMAX screenings contributed close to $22 million to the international collection, 15% of the total, which was added to the $29.6 million domestically, 23.8% of the entire US box office. That is to say: large formats accounted for 53% of national revenue. Of course, critics praised the film, and aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes They give him a 95%, the highest grade of Nolan’s career, and sixth of yours to exceed 90% along with Memento, Insomnia, The Dark Knight, Dunkirk and Oppenheimer. Every three years like clockwork. Since the premiere of ‘Interstellar‘ in 2014, Nolan has taken up a tireless rhythm of one film every three years: ‘Dunkirk’ in 2017, ‘Tenet‘in 2020,’Oppenheimer‘ in 2023 and now ‘The Odyssey’ in 2026. Behind this regularity is an unusual production structure in Hollywood. His wife Emma Thomas has produced all of his feature films. They founded the production company Syncopy in 2001, with which Nolan develops his projects without depending on the usual machinery of a large studio. That autonomy partly explains why it can allow these wide parentheses: it does not need to prime a universe annually to justify million-dollar budgets. Fire test. That independence was put to the test in 2021. Nolan broke up with Warner Bros. after the studio decided to release its entire 2021 catalog simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max. Nolan said the decision made no economic sense, in a statement in which came to comment that the company had gone from having “the perfect machine” for distributing films to dismantling it itself. He moved his next project, ‘Oppenheimer,’ to Universal, the same studio now backing ‘The Odyssey.’ No rival at the moment. Shawn Robbins, director of analytics at Fandango, summarized the phenomenon with a short phrase: “Death, taxes and Christopher Nolan”, referring, in a well-known Anglo-Saxon phrase, to three totems of life that are completely inevitable. Nolan has already gone in there. Of course, the director’s career seems to be an absolute concatenation of critical and public successes that attracts even non-regulars: of the 7.5 million tickets sold in the US, 43% of those spectators go to the cinema only a few times a year. ‘The Odyssey’ has no direct competition next week. The only threat on the calendar is ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’, which arrives in two weeks. On the other hand, ‘The Odyssey’ has not yet been released in China, Japan or South Korea, markets that could continue pushing up a figure that already corroborates that the days of Batman are long behind us and that Nolan does not need superheroes to sweep the box office. He alone is his own franchise. In Xataka | Christopher Nolan responds to Matt Damon’s defeatism about ‘The Odyssey’: “Cinema is vital and essential, and continues to transform”