The Odyssey's first weekend has made Australia the film's fourth-biggest market outside North America. Universal's estimates, reported by Deadline on Sunday night, Australian time, put the local take at US$9.3 million, the largest opening weekend any film has managed here in 2026.
The global number is the record. Universal's estimates put Christopher Nolan's Homer adaptation at US$264.1 million worldwide for the weekend, US$124.5 million of it in North America and US$139.6 million from 73 international markets, the biggest opening of Nolan's career and clear of the US$249 million The Dark Knight Rises banked in 2012. Saturday's projections had the figure at US$257.8 million; Sunday's estimates moved it higher. In North America it is the third-biggest opening of the year behind Toy Story 5 and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and the largest for an R-rated film in Universal's history.
Only the United Kingdom and Ireland at US$17.4 million, France at US$13.7 million and Italy at US$11.5 million outdrew Australia, which finished ahead of far larger markets including Germany, India and Mexico. Deadline's report puts the local result just behind The Dark Knight Rises as Nolan's second-biggest Australian weekend, and it confirms Thursday's record opening day was no launch spike.
Melbourne is carrying a disproportionate share of the story. IMAX Melbourne is the only cinema in the southern hemisphere showing the film in IMAX 70mm, one of 41 such sites worldwide, and its screen is the largest of its kind anywhere. The venue sold more than 17,000 tickets worth over $800,000 within 24 hours of sessions going on sale, FilmInk reported, with the booking site crashing under hour-long queues. "This is the biggest image of the film anywhere on earth, on the largest screen of its kind in the world," general manager Jeremy Fee said. Premium formats did similar work globally: IMAX accounted for US$51.8 million of the worldwide estimate, about 23 per cent.
The film itself is a US$250 million bet on scale, the first feature shot entirely with IMAX film cameras, with Matt Damon as Odysseus leading a cast that includes Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron and Lupita Nyong'o. Audiences graded it A on CinemaScore and critics have it at 95 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. With a marketing spend Forbes puts around US$125 million, the break-even line sits near US$625 million worldwide, so the record weekend is a start, not a verdict.
Every figure above is a studio estimate in US dollars. The Australian-dollar actuals from local industry tracker Numero arrive early in the week, and with them the answer to the only open question: whether the biggest opening weekend of 2026 settles into an Oppenheimer-style long run here, or burns through its audience in a fortnight.
