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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-43% in sales, but hey I guess to you that -43% is a good thing. Who is buying into the propaganda now? Honestly this stuff is not hard to look up.
Box office performance domestic
Jul 17-19 $123.50M
Jul 24-26 $90.02M -27%
Jul 31-Aug 2 $51.05M -43%
“ People I personally know said this movie is horrible”
They do?
I don’t suppose you have specifics on that.
It made 900 million in two weeks.
“ because of what Hollywood can do with graphics”
Graphics?
What do you mean?
“ But I think his goal was “Awards”
Any basis for this thought?
“ 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”
As of two weeks, last Saturday, it was at $900 million. $300 million in profits. In two weeks.
“ Oddyssey Box office numbers have been tanking.”
Tanking is not a word I would use with $900 million sales, $300 million in profit after just 2 weeks.
That is silly
I'm looking at how steep the drop has been after the advance ticket sales.
Is all you are going to do is quote a number? You challenged me on my stating the viewership dropped off and I posted facts, you now ignore them.
You quote a number no one has debated; one I gave a reasonable understanding of why it does not reflect some popular upswell. The number alone is not some magical proof everyone in the world loves it, in fact given the size of presales one can easily make the argument many may even regret it.
Regardless are you going to actually add something interesting or continue to parrot the latest NPC liberal programming?
As for the friends I talked to, they hated the casting (they would prefer heroes and villains to be larger than life, not your everyman character), found the dialog uninspiring, often pulling you out of the theater experience and the plot clunked along, was not smooth and engaging. Their words, not mine. I guess next you want names, serial numbers and addresses?
Let me help you get back on point, do you consider - 43% not a drop off?
Most agree this movie with marketing cost a hard 1 billion, now that can be debated because the producers almost never release the real costs. That makes a profits discussion pointless until a year or more into the future from release.
IMO the break-even was closer to 1 billion many agree, but yes some don’t.
At $300 mil profit, record sales in 2 weeks, I don’t see failure here.
If I were Nolan, I’d be home happy to take time off. Maybe think about what to do next
People who believe he is owned by the audio don’t know he walked away from Warner brothers and don’t think about $300 million in profits in 2 weeks makes Nolan someone no studio can say no to.
I challenge you to prove that profit. Not speculation, not articles guessing, show the actual finances (pro tip they are not released and do not release for some time)
“ I’m looking at how steep the drop has been after the advance ticket sales.”
Yes. That’s what this propaganda piece is trying to sell
It has made $300 million in profits. What more does it need?
You are not stating a fact and the drop of was literally posted (factually) to you in the thread.
Stop lying through assertions.
“ Is all you are going to do is quote a number? You challenged me on my stating the viewership dropped off and I posted facts, you now ignore them.
Viewership dropped off after making a huge profit - blowing past break even in two weeks
There is no problem here. The studio made a huge profit. What is the problem with a drop off
He can go to zero.
“ Most agree this movie with marketing cost a hard 1 billion”
Variety states &625
Most agree is a silly number. Care to cite any publication on that?
But...but...but there were posters on here telling me how wrong I was about the Odyssey, that no one cared about the woke mis-casting and how it was going to break all kinds of new profit records....
Odyssey has $900 in global revenues. It turned a profit. And gee yeah a superhero movie made a lot of money, there’s a surprise. Really these guys trying to make hay against Odyssey are hilarious. It made money, get over it.
Started with Jaws 50 years ago - Spielberg gave the audience what they wanted - a great, fun summer thriller, not beset by politics or woke casting - of course it was a different time, but you’d think they learn from that.
I remember standing in a loooong line to see Jaws in the hot sun - was definitely worth it and I re-watch it every 4th of July.
Moviegoers are sick of being lectured to about politics, race and other issues. Most of us love the escapism of movies.
And it looks like the latest Spider-man movie is exactly that.
Forbes magazine 16 July, opening day:
Reported budget: $250 million
Reported marketing costs: $125 million
So that is a $375 million total before the theater cut, which puts break even from $625 million to $750 million, depending on which estimate metric is used.
Skwor- accusations are not intelligent argument
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