“The Odyssey” Sails Across 20,000 Screens in China While “Spider-Man” Swings to New Heights
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is now sailing through the Middle Kingdom.
Nolan’s epic, now the highest-grossing film of his career, opens on more than 20,000 screens across mainland China today (August 14), including 90% of the nation’s IMAX screens, in nearly 800 theaters. IMAX has confirmed that The Odyssey will screen on the premium-format screens even as Spider-Man: Brand New Day keeps swinging successfully in Chinese theaters.
Nolan was in China with producer and wife Emma Thomas and stars Matt Damon and Charlize Theron, who play the long-waylaid and complicated hero Odysseus and the goddess Calypso, respectively. They started their visit with photos in a Beijing courtyard next to a 100-year-old maple tree, where Thomas, Damon, and Theron surprised Nolan with a birthday cake and a song. They attended The Odyssey‘s China premiere on July 30 at the China National Film Museum, which boasts an IMAX GT-certified screen. More than 500 fans and media outlets were there ahead of a moderated Q&A for press and VIPs.
One endlessly fascinating part of the China visit was Nolan’s interview with philosophy lecturer and podcaster Zhong Shu, currently a PhD candidate in political philosophy at Boston College, which first appeared on China’s Bilibili video platform and has since gone viral for its depth and complexity. Shu asked Nolan how his worldview and personal philosophy shaped The Odyssey, giving us rare insight into the deeper precincts of Nolan’s thought process. It’s worth a watch.
Meanwhile, director Destin Daniel Cretton’s Brand New Day has made history—again. After scoring the highest-grossing opening weekend in box office history, the fourth installment of the Tom Holland-led franchise has become the quickest film to reach $700 million at the domestic box office. This moves it past Ryan Coogler’s 2018 game-changer Black Panther and Joseph Kosinski’s 2022 afterburner Top Gun: Maverick.
Brand New Day‘s success has many architects. Of course, fans love both the character and Tom Holland’s interpretation of him, as well as the connection audiences have with Holland, Zendaya as MJ, and Jacob Batalon as Peter’s bestie Ned. Then there’s the fact that the previous Spider-Man trilogy with the aforementioned cast, all directed by Jon Watts, grew in popularity and ambition with each installment, without ever abandoning what people love about the character; namely that he’s a nice young man slightly in over his head, doing his absolute best to take on the great responsibility of having such great powers.
Then there was the wise decision by the Brand New Day team, led by Cretton, producer Amy Pascal, Marvel boss Kevin Feige, and writers Chris McKenna and Eric Sommers to not try to outdo the multiverse-madness of the last film, No Way Home, and instead ground Brand New Day in Peter’s struggles and isolation as he deals with the fallout from the events in that last film. Brand New Day is a film about Peter becoming an adult, no longer able to run to mentors, and having to navigate a changing relationship to his powers and a mysterious new threat without his girlfriend MJ or best friend Ned. That’s because they no longer remember him after Peter sacrificed his own identity and connections at the end of No Way Home, courtesy of a spell from Doctor Strange, to keep them safe. It all added up to a deeper, richer fourth installment that once again proves audiences are eager and willing to fill movie theaters far and wide to see a great story well told.
For more on the craft behind Spider-Man: Brand New Day, check out these stories:
How Production Designer Charles Wood Created Spider-Man’s Lonely New York for “Brand New Day”
Featured image: L-r: Spider-Man in Columbia Pictures SPIDER-MAN™: BRAND NEW DAY. photo by: Courtesy of Sony Pictures; Director Christopher Nolan on the set of his film THE ODYSSEY, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.
