‘The Odyssey’ Smashes Box Office Opening Weekend Predictions

The Odyssey is officially Christopher Nolan’s best-ever global box office start, opening with an absolute bang to $264.1 million worldwide and $124.5 million domestically.

Those totals are far above what Universal and trade publications had projected for the epic film starring Matt Damon. Going into the weekend, The Odyssey was projected to open within the $90 million to $100 million range domestically, Variety reported.

Polymarket traders predicted even higher results; in a poll predicting the film’s domestic sales for the weekend, there were 50% odds on Friday that it would make more than $115 million, and 47% odds that it would make between $105 million and $115 million. Those odds only rose as the weekend went on, eventually overwhelmingly so.

Lo and behold, at $124.5 million domestically, The Odyssey proved Polymarket traders correct with their bold prediction of $115 million+. Those were some big numbers to fill, but bettors appear to have full faith in the film — so much so that they’re giving it 91% odds of making more than $350 million worldwide by the end of August.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the critics score stands at 95%. At the start of the weekend, a Polymarket scenario predicting the Rotten Tomatoes score at the close of opening weekend gave it 88% odds of the score being 95% or higher. As the weekend went on, those odds rose steadily to >99%.

The $124.5 million total breaks several records, including the best domestic start year-to-date for a movie, the best ever opening for Matt Damon, record opening for a Universal R-rated movie, Nolan’s third-best debut, as well as the fourth best R-rated opening after Deadpool & Wolverine ($211.4 million), Deadpool ($132.4 million) and Deadpool 2 ($125.5 million), Deadline reports.

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