‘The Odyssey’ Just Delivered Christopher Nolan’s Biggest Overseas Opening Ever

Christopher Nolan has built his reputation on box office durability, but even by his own standards, this week’s numbers out of China stand out. His latest epic has spent months steadily climbing toward records across nearly every market it touches, and its long-awaited China debut just added another milestone to that list.

The film opened across mainland China on more than 20,000 screens, including roughly 90% of the country’s IMAX footprint, following a run of preview screenings that had already generated significant buzz among ticket buyers. That anticipation showed up clearly in the numbers as the film’s official release date arrived.

‘The Odyssey‘ grossed $15.9 million on its Friday opening day in China, spread across just 57,000 screenings and including $7.6 million carried over from total previews. That haul made it the biggest opening day of Nolan’s career in the Chinese market, edging past ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’s’ $15.1 million to rank as the ninth-biggest opening day for a Hollywood film in the region since the pandemic.

The film’s opening-day total still trails several of the biggest post-pandemic Hollywood releases in China, including ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ at $17.2 million, ‘Fast X’ at $17.6 million, and ‘Meg 2: The Trench’ at $20.3 million. It also falls short of ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’s’ $22.5 million, ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’s’ $23.2 million, and ‘Zootopia 2’s’ $33.9 million, with ‘F9’ still sitting well ahead at $58.4 million.

Even without cracking the very top of that list, landing at number nine represents a significant result for a original, non-franchise film going up against titles with built-in global fanbases. It’s also a notable jump for Nolan specifically, whose previous China releases, including ‘Tenet’ and ‘Oppenheimer,’ never approached this kind of single-day total.

Word of mouth has remained a major driver behind the film’s momentum. On Maoyan, China’s largest ticketing platform, audience scores for ‘The Odyssey’ have reached a 9.7 out of 10, a score that functions similarly to an A+ CinemaScore rating and currently ranks as the highest score recorded for any Hollywood film in the post-COVID era, matching ‘Zootopia 2’s’ equally strong 9.7 rating.

The film has also picked up an 8.3 out of 10 audience score on Douban, another closely watched Chinese review platform, reinforcing the strength of the reception so far. With Saturday pre-sales already sitting at $4.6 million and set to expand across more than 58,000 screenings, more than a thousand additional showings compared to opening day, momentum shows little sign of slowing.

Industry watchers are now projecting a three-day opening weekend in China somewhere between $35 million and $45 million, a range that would place ‘The Odyssey’ among the biggest Hollywood openings in the region since the pandemic reshaped moviegoing patterns worldwide. That kind of debut would also mark the biggest three-day weekend of Nolan’s career in China, surpassing the box office runs of both ‘Tenet’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ in the same market.

What makes the projection even more striking is the screen count behind it. Reaching that range with under 60,000 screenings puts ‘The Odyssey’ in rare territory compared to other titles that needed significantly wider releases to hit similar numbers.

With its worldwide total already closing in on the $1.2 billion mark and a China run that’s outperforming expectations, ‘The Odyssey’ looks increasingly likely to end up as one of the defining box office stories of the year, and quite possibly the biggest commercial hit of Nolan’s career to date.

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