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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No. It’s doing very well. The predictions here were very bad so any bad news, fake or not, will be hauled out and lipsticked like a positive review of Dana Bash getting verbally bashed by RFK Jr on a Sunday morning show
To be expected
Of note, nowhere did I say it was tanking, only that it dropped off and being a Nolan film that was likely enough to carry it through to some profits.
I do take issue with the merits of the film from the reviews I follow and the clips I have seen. That is enough, to me as a fan of classical literature, to say it not worth my time.
“ The wokies arseholes pushing this crappola did not expect that the commie trash “femNazi translator” would turn on them. She came out condemning Nolan’s latest pile of garbage.”
Why wouldn’t they expect that? When I read her nonsense yesterday, I said, of course that’s what she would do.
Nolan went to a Prep school outside of London then studied literature in college in Britain.
Hers was simply not the only version he has read and referred to
He found something in her translation that he used. Big deal
Nobody’s got a hard financial sheet. And you know that. But the public budget was $250 million, and it’s made over $900 million, if that’s not enough to be profitable then a lot of people need to get fired.
I’m not vested in it. I always knew it would make money. Nolan always makes money. There’s a reason why there was a bidding war for him when WB made him mad. He’s the golden goose, he makes high prestige movies that the studios can point to and say “see we don’t just make 4 quadrant crap” and he turns a profit.
I do enjoy laughing at people that all worked up about this. It’s funny as hell. I especially enjoy this story that suddenly thinks Spider-Man is a savior against woke, when just a few short years ago all the anti-woke people were in a twist because Zendaya got cast as MJ. She’s still MJ but somehow Spider-Man is no longer woke because Odyssey. That’s hilarious.
Oh I can’t evaluate the audience appeal of an actress who goes on every show for the older hosts to leer at her in a state of near undress?
Hollywood is a meat parade.
Thank you for clarifying her ethnicity.
My point was why pretend the Odyssey movie was any kind of a failure, when it wasn’t.
I’ve been corrected that she’s African not Hispanic but whatever.
I’m more annoyed by her angsty character.
And just tired of seeing her and Tom Holland everywhere. But young people need pop idols so I guess.
Simple google:
“Christopher Nolan did not use computer graphics (CGI) for his film The Odyssey (2026 film), choosing instead to rely on practical effects, custom mechanical builds, and in-camera technique
- Cyclops: Built as a massive, fully mechanical 60-foot practical puppet operated on location inside a real cave rather than generated via computer graphics.
-The Fall of Troy: Shot entirely with zero green screens or digital crowds, utilizing a large-scale physical set, hand-built stone structures, and real performers.Transformations & Effects: Relied on custom physical prosthetics for character transformations instead of digital
900 million total sales (as you agreed that is nowhere near the actual return on investment) likely hit break-even but no one makes a film like that to break even, they are looking for a serious return, especially from someone like Nolan
And yes, you are right no one knows the financial statements yet, because they are not released, has been my point all long.
I will add though if this film cost only 250-350 million and they cleared 500 million already we would know the real numbers because that would be a PR campaign in of itself to get more people in seats.
You are desperate to make a failure out of a success. it’s made almost a billion dollars in 18 days. Not even three weeks yet. The decline you claim, not supported by the actual information available. The actual week to week decrease is normal for any movie. You seem to be basing everything you argue on your feels, not demonstrable facts in any way. And yet you claim others are fact free.
A billion dollars in 18 days. That is a success no matter how you look at it.
Hollywierd needs them as a power couple to create some star power after all the idiot actresses and actors went rogue woke fan hating mode. Hollywierd is probably spending real money to manage the couple’s image imho, getting married only helps that as well
They will likely stay popular, at least until she poops in his bed
THen it's possible that the film is not entirely woke, but the casting of Ellen Paig suggests otherwise.
Sure they would. Again NOBODY talks about movies being profitable. Even bringing that up would be a PR disaster. Part of the illusion Hollywood likes to sell, especially when it comes to the prestige movies, is that they aren’t a factory and they’re trying to make art and profits be damned. It’s all a lie of course. But that’s the sell, and in order to make the sell you NEVER advertise profitability. So the fact you think they should be doing something they literally never have done in the history of the industry shows just how addicted you are to a false narrative.
The movie is profitable now. And will be more profitable before it’s run is over. With the facts on the table we have no other conclusion.
OR the whole “go woke go broke” thing was just a BS meme that had nothing to do with the facts. This series of Spider-Man was considered woke when it first hit, oddly enough for one of the same casting decisions people are whining for the Odyssey. Now all of a sudden that same crowd is declaring it the great woke killer, even though Zendaya is playing traditionally white characters in both.
Right.. if multibillion-dollar industry spends a billion dollars to make a million dollar profit that is a huge success LMAO
Pretty sure they don’t see it that way
Only if you want it to. Spend every waking moment looking for deeper meanings in things it will tie you in knots. It’s a movie. Entertainment. It’s a story retelling a story that has been retold and retold for ages.
Look up the Galli, Enarei, Leucippus etc... in Greek mythology.
You keep saying this. Nothing indicates that as being factual either. You’ve been asked for a source for this claim but have yet to produce it. Others have shown you where actual estimates have been stated that are no where near what you claim and you have failed to do the same while restated it over and over.
1) The Odyssey made $1 Billion in 2 weeks
2) You expect a Disney movie to be less woke?
I keep saying that 900 million in sales does not guarantee they got the ROI they were looking for.
I say this because 900 million in sales is literally not 900 million, rule of thumb that is between 450 to 600 ish million because the distributors and theaters take their cut. Secondly it is common the projected cost reported is lower than actually costs, by a good bit typically, taking the projected 250 million and 125 projected marketing is 375 million, if you go back and look at movies over the last decade you will see that commonly that number ends up 1.5 to 2 times that amount.
So like you and everyone else I am indeed speculating but at least I am doing it with reason, not just looking at a top-level number and ignoring everything else that goes into it.
I have literally stated we will know more in a year after this release runs its course and we get the actual financial reports.
What I find telling is if they already broke the bank on profit we would likely have been told the real cost as a marketing strategy to promote how well the movie is doing. That has not been the case for this movie when in the past for “blockbusters” it was the case they did make record profits.
Tom Holland is just the next generation version of Will Wheaton! There is one every couple of decades just to keep people wincing, i suppose!
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