The Odyssey Breaks Major Deadpool Record, And Ryan Reynolds Has Perfect Response
A couple of weeks before Spider-Man: Brand New Day started making box office history on a seemingly daily basis, The Odyssey was the record-breaking blockbuster of the summer. From its opening weekend, Christopher Nolan’s fantasy epic has been setting all kinds of new all-time marks, ultimately becoming the acclaimed director’s highest-grossing film ever at the worldwide box office. A little under a month into its run, The Odyssey became just the third R-rated film in history to earn $1 billion globally, putting it on pace to eclipse Deadpool & Wolverine for another all-time record. As The Odyssey makes another bit of history, Ryan Reynolds has the perfect response.
The Odyssey has now surpassed Deadpool & Wolverine as the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time (unadjusted for inflation, of course). Reynolds congratulated The Odyssey‘s cast and crew in a very on-brand way, posting an edited video that splices shots from The Odyssey into the famous car fight from Deadpool & Wolverine … an action sequence that coincidentally took place in a Honda Odyssey. Check it out in the space below:
How The Odyssey Beat Deadpool & Wolverine‘s Record
Coming into the year, The Odyssey was always expected to be a sizable box office draw. Christopher Nolan is one of the few directors working today whose name alone can sell audiences on anything — even a three-hour biopic about the man who created the atomic bomb. Nolan’s big breakthrough came helming Batman movies, but the likes of Inception, Interstellar, and more prove he doesn’t need Gotham City to deliver a commercial hit. What might be a bit surprising is just how big The Odyssey became. For all his success, The Dark Knight Rises was Nolan’s last $1 billion film. Plus, the rating and run time potentially could have limited its box office prospects.
It wasn’t a shock when Deadpool & Wolverine grossed $1.338 billion worldwide. The film is a crowd-pleasing action comedy starring two massively popular superheroes that’s fueled by nostalgia for the old Fox Marvel movies. The Odyssey is medieval fantasy, a genre that’s struggled at the box office recently. But trends don’t always apply to Nolan. The Odyssey benefitted from enthusiastic word of mouth, with many critics praising it as one of the director’s best films. That reception combined with the fact that The Odyssey was the first movie to be shot entirely with IMAX cameras made it one of the definitive event films of the summer. Casual audiences and cinephiles alike were intrigued to see Nolan’s vision for the classic story on the biggest screen possible.
The Odyssey would have dwarfed any and all competition as it arrived in theaters, but it also got to take full advantage of a weak summer marketplace. With the exception of Pixar’s Toy Story 5 ($1.116 billion), May and June were largely defined by major studio tentpoles that underwhelmed at the box office. Films like The Mandalorian and Grogu, Masters of the Universe, and Supergirl did not live up to expectations, so the appetite for big-screen spectacle was quite large by the time The Odyssey premiered. It felt like most moviegoers were saving their hard-earned cash for the one-two punch of The Odyssey and Brand New Day in July, and then those two films have held well throughout August.
Right now, The Odyssey is the second-highest-grossing movie of the year worldwide, behind only Brand New Day. It’s all but guaranteed to finish 2026 in the top 5. Barring something unforeseen this fall, the only film remaining on the calendar this year with a realistic chance to hit $1 billion is Avengers: Doomsday, which is performing extremely well in ticket pre-sales. Whether The Odyssey ends up in second or third place remains to be seen, but either way, this is a tremendous accomplishment.
