How Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” Became a Phenomenon for Moviegoers, Readers, and Gen Z
When Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey set sail into theaters over the July 17 weekend, it was already enjoying a massive tailwind of critical acclaim and audience enthusiasm. Tickets had been selling like whatever ancient Greece’s version of hot cakes was starting a year ago, when premium format seats first became available. The weekend proved to be a historic one for Nolan, as The Odyssey went on to pull in $263.7 million, a career-best global haul, topping his 2012 trilogy-caper The Dark Knight Rises.
There are some obvious reasons for The Odyssey’s success, Nolan himself being right at the top of the list. In the past two decades plus, the filmmaker has become arguably the biggest draw in the business, his name alone piquing interest for film lovers, and his technical ambition combined with his collaboration with huge stars and incredible collaborators behind-the-camera has become as close to a sure-thing as you can get when it comes to prestige filmmaking. His last film, the Oscar-winning Oppenheimer, was a global phenomenon that won Best Picture and Best Director Oscars, to name a few awards, all that for a film about a tortured theoretical physicist.
For his adaptation of Homer’s epic specifically, Universal Pictures did an ace job ensuring that fans knew the lengths Nolan and his team went to capture a one-of-a-kind sword-and-sandals epic. Nolan and his team became the first filmmakers to shoot an entire feature with IMAX cameras. They filmed aboard an actual boat, a Viking ship called the Drake, which they sourced in Norway, out on the actual waters of the Mediterranean, the North Sea off Scotland’s coast, and the frigid waters of Iceland. They devised all manner of ingenious fixes and workarounds to capture The Odyssey on the grandest scale possible, even in the most intimate scenes, specifically those involving Matt Damon’s Odysseus and Anne Hathaway’s Penelope. This gonzo commitment to creating something worthy of Homer’s deathless adventure story became a major draw for audiences. So much so, people were not only crossing state lines to catch the film on IMAX and other premium-format theaters, but some were crossing national borders. Talk about undertaking a personal odyssey to Nolan’s epic.
Even when Nolan’s film seemed to get ensnared in a silly, jumped-up culture war, it sailed effortlessly through those choppy waters. And while audiences young and old and everywhere in between flocked to see The Odyssey, it’s notable that half of those who snagged seats were between the ages of 18 and 34, confirming that Nolan has sparked the excitement and curiosity of Gen Z and younger millennials, not just older viewers who were thrilled by the idea of Nolan taking on a nearly 3,000-year-old piece of iconic world literature.
PostTrak surveys say that audiences have cited Nolan as their top reason for seeing The Odyssey, a fairly stunning piece of intel considering the film stars Damon, Hathaway, Zendaya, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, and Lupita Nyong’o, to name a few.
“We had high expectations for the movie and high expectations for our performance, and it exceeded both,” IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond told The Hollywood Reporter. “Chris knows how to use IMAX technology and the IMAX brand as well as anyone on the planet.”
Nolan’s ambitious retelling finds Damon’s Odysseus and his men spending nearly 20-years at sea, the first ten in the slog of the Trojan War, the last ten attempting to get back to Ithaca. They’re confronted by trickster goddesses with monstrous powers, a sheepherding Cyclops with a taste for human flesh, armored giants, a six-headed, cliff-dwelling monster, and the memories of a brutal martial campaign that become a source of torment for Odysseus above all. All the while, his wife Penelope and their son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), are besieged by vile suitors eating and drinking through the family’s provisions, trying, year after year, to take Ithaca’s throne and Penelope’s hand.
The excitement over Nolan’s adaptation has spilled over into book sales—Circana Bookscan reports that sales across all editions of “The Odyssey” are up 76% this year. This also extends to Spotify streams of the audiobook format, which, according to the platform, have now been listened to for the “equivalent of more than 43 years of continuous playback” across 91 audiobook editions in 10 languages, Spotify told Variety.
On the opening day of Nolan’s The Odyssey, listens jumped more than 500% on Spotify. In June, weeks before the premiere, listens had surged more than 240%, while post-premiere listens are up 680%. The audiobook has been especially drawing in younger listeners, with 36% being Gen Z and 45% Millennials.
“It’s always exciting to see beloved classics find new audiences,” Lena Yang, Senior Editor for Audiobooks at Spotify, told Variety. “Audiobooks offer a fresh way to experience timeless tales, and it’s especially rewarding to see listeners returning to ‘The Odyssey’ in such a meaningful way.”
It was Helen’s face (played by Lupita Nyong’o in the film) that launches a thousand ships in the lead-up to the Trojan War; it’s Nolan’s name, and the work of him and his collaborators, that has helped reignite interest in arguably the greatest story ever told.
Featured image: Matt Damon is Odysseus in “The Odyssey.” Courtesy Universal Pictures.
