Christopher Nolan doesn’t need a superhero suit, a lightsaber, or a shared universe to sell out movie tickets. Instead, he appears to have enough brand equity to make a nearly three-hour, R-rated adaptation of Homer open bigger than any Batman movie he ever made.
The Odyssey—Nolan’s take on the classic Greek epic about a mythological hero’s boat ride home—raked in $264 million in its opening weekend, clearing its $250 million production budget and topping The Dark Knight Rises, The Dark Knight, and Oppenheimer to become the director’s biggest global debut.
