Posted on 08/04/2026 5:14:48 AM PDT by Red Badger
Hollywood pulled out all the stops for “The Odyssey” – They relied heavily on director Christopher Nolan’s built-in and generally pretentious audience to drive early box office revenues.
The hype machine was running non-stop for months before the release. The distributor’s focused heavily on IMAX ticket sales, which cost more than double a normal theater ticket. They attempted to hide the woke content of the film from the public for as long as possible (an ancient Greek epic with no Greeks, featuring black, Asian, Hispanic and trans actors with a story that deconstructs the hero’s journey of Odysseus, making him into a broken shell of a man. Historical inaccuracies and modernization are rampant in the movie.
Critical websites also froze the audience ratings above 95% by rejecting most negative reviews.
Despite all of this, The Odyssey’s early box office was not impressive compared to most blockbuster movies. It didn’t even break the top 60 movies for opening weekend revenues (adjusted for inflation). The political left rushed onto social media to declare victory, claiming that “Get Woke, Go Broke is over”.
Then, Spider Man: Brand New Day opened and ate The Odyssey’s lunch, showing how a real blockbuster is supposed to perform.
For its opening weekend, Spider Man raked in $927 million worldwide – Compare that to The Odyssey’s $264 million global box office for the first weekend. Spider Man crushed The Odyssey without trying. Spider Man is projected to make around $2.5 billion in the next few weeks while Nolan’s movie is struggling to hit $1 billion. If Nolan had made a non-woke movie, maybe he would have had better numbers.
The Odyssey’s theater take sounds like a success, despite being easily surpassed by Spider Man. However, with all the bluster over the film’s “woke triumph”, leftists are avoiding an inconvenient truth: The Odyssey has yet to make a single penny in raw profit.
Nolan’s woke translation has brought in $911 million after three weeks, but it needs around $950 million just to break even. This is accounting for marketing costs, theaters taking their 50% cut, and Nolan taking his own 20% cut of revenues as part of his contract. Will the Odyssey break even? Probably, but Universal Studios will be straining to make any meaningful profit from the production.
Nolan will be laughing all the way to the bank, but distributors will not be as fortunate. Spider Man has already surpassed the break even point and made a profit.
In the end, The Odyssey will represent nothing more than a woke vanity project for a director who is fading in talent. Nolan says he may be taking several years away from the business after Odyssey, which means Hollywood expended all its ammunition on one last stand.
The Hollywood model has long been to force progressive content on audiences while ignoring public pleas for less propaganda. In the minds of the elites, the masses must be conditioned over time to accept wokeness. They believe that if they saturate the market for long enough, movie-goers will eventually capitulate and accept woke as the new normal. This has not happened.
Instead, nearly every woke movie and streaming series has failed, losing the industry billions in cumulative production costs. Studios have been forced in the past couple of years to return to less political messaging and more classic entertainment.
The Odyssey is a defiant rebellion, specifically designed as a vehicle to revitalize the Hollywood argument in favor of woke content. Yet, compared to non-woke movies, the profit margin is looking dismal.
The political left never learns, they only double down on failure and convince themselves that their own propaganda is reality. Even if one considers The Odyssey a “success” for making it’s money back, how many woke movies can Christopher Nolan possibly direct? One every few years? No other director has a similar simp audience to lean on.
Meaning, The Odyssey is likely the last gasp, the death rattle of far-left content gaining any momentum in theaters for years to come. One woke movie breaking even does not make up for hundreds of box office disasters.
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“If Nolan had made a non-woke movie, maybe he would have had better numbers.”
If he had made a non-woke film, Hollywood and the critics would have slammed it and most people would have ignored it because it’s boring AND hard for modern audiences to take.
At the end of the book, he kills the people trying to take his property and wife, including some who begged him on their knees to let them live a little longer. Not sure that would sell to a modern audience...
And his numbers are NOT bad. He’s made a profit. He’ll get awards. He’s happy. Just like Barbie, a bad woke movie can still draw audiences. Sometimes.
Not sure if article is correct but breaking even does not sound like a financial hit🤔
The thing is that she was a child when this version of the franchise started. She was a cute kid. She is a beautiful woman now.
Mary Jane is the least of the problems with Marvel movies.
If he had made a non-woke film,
Nolan had no say in it. It was either make it woke, or not make it at all.
You seriously just quoted commercial reviews as being great?
I also guess you missed where places like Rotten Tomato has been caught massively deleting and pumping up reviews for this movie.
People I personally know said this movie is horrible and the reviewers I trust, like Nerdotic and Critical Drinker, to mention few (not exclusive to them, just 2 you may know) have nothing good to say about it.
Nerdrotic called this perfectly, even before the movie was released, he stated due to presales and the cultlike Nolan following it will likely do well enough, which is pretty much what happened. The drop off shows it is not catching on by word of mouth.
This article seems like conservative wish-casting. The Odyssey did very, very well at the box office. And the pre-release labeling it as Woke was a little overblown - the controversial casting turned out to be for characters that had about three minutes of screen time. The Odyssey was a flawed movie that is doing well. Not a Woke movie that got crushed. But Spiderman is doing incredibly well. Its funny - one criticism of the Odyssey is that Tom Holland and Zendaya are limited in their acting ability and gave one-note performances. Yet between the Odyssey and Spiderman, they are the reigning King and Queen of the box office. Holland, especially, has been in the highest opening movies of all time by some measures.
I’m sure you are right. Although he probably could have made it with a smaller budget. But I think his goal was “Awards” and he’s happy to make some profit along with it.
The awards and his bowing the knee will make it easier for him to fund future projects.
So many woke movies failed hard, now Nolan, a director with a cult like following that generated presales like no other movie, has not generated a break-even revenue yet.
The movie has collapsed for viewership after word of mouth got out, and the media has been caught overhyping and censoring reviews like a spinning top.
I think it has been the “success” of this movie that is being overhyped.
They finally get a movie they can pretend appeals to modern audiences and have gone all into create a successful narrative.
Don’t forget Ned Leeds...
The ONLY issue I had with Top Gun Maverick was the WOKE makeup of the aviators. Meaning there was one Black guy, one Asian guy, One Hispanic female, etc.
The Asian guy seemed kind of light in the loafers too.
At least the main saviors/heros were the three white male aviators.
“The Odyssey made more than 900 million dollars worldwide in less than 3 weeks.”
Both are good movies. Finally. Will
Freepers cheering Disney/Marvel is the only real story here. With the same cast, no less.
Back when logic ruled, we had two to five movies in one summer.
Believing any headline that sounds like what they want to hear
The Odyssey blew past its break even $625 million in 2 weeks and is past $300 million in profits.
Variety:
August.2-
“The Odyssey” continues to shatter expectations, too. Christopher Nolan‘s Greek epic has generated a remarkable $911 million worldwide after three weekends in theaters. It’s poised to imminently cross the billion-dollar mark, underscoring
“ The movie stayed away from politics and PC nonsense and…”
Maverick? Not woke?
That’s just funny. I am laughing
“ The drop off says much more than the initial sales. No one is going to see it via word of mouth, once it was a known film people have decided it is not worth seeing.”
What drop off? Oh you’re buying this propaganda.
Oddyssey Box office numbers have been tanking.
“ The Odyssey made more than 900 million dollars worldwide in less than 3 weeks.
And still didn’t break even.”
It cost $625 to make and market. I mean simple math is simple
It’s into $300 million in profits after a couple of weekend
Nolan is home doing what people do after work. No drama. He just made $300 million for himself and Universal
What? He’s some dumb greedy idiot for whom that’s not success? I see no evidence of that
Nolan did what he was told to do. In Hollywood, to get along, you go along.
“ It’s made $700 million since opening. Generally, the reviews both commercial and from audience has been great. We can keep telling ourselves what we want to believe but reality doesn’t seem to support it.”
$911 million. Actually. As of Saturday 1 aug
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