Entertainment

14 Years Later, Christopher Nolan Officially Has Another $1 Billion Blockbuster

Director Christopher Nolan admitted that his 2023 release, the biographical thriller Oppenheimer, exceeded his and the studio’s commercial expectations. That said, the movie fell painfully short of the coveted $1 billion mark at the worldwide box office, concluding its global theatrical run with $975 million. Had it managed to gross $25 million more, it would have become Nolan’s third film to generate more than $1 billion globally, after The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. Oppenheimer could still join the elite club if it’s ever re-released, but Nolan didn’t have to wait too long to deliver his third billion-dollar blockbuster. His latest epic, The Odyssey, has passed the massive milestone in just three weeks of release.

Starring Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, and Robert Pattinson, the nearly three-hour epic was touted as Nolan’s most ambitious project. With a reported budget of $250 million, it is, along with The Dark Knight Rises, the filmmaker’s most expensive movie. The Odyssey opened to near-unanimous praise in July and is currently sitting at a “Certified Fresh” 94% critics’ score and a “Verified Hot” 97% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. The aggregator website’s consensus reads, “Reinvigorating an ancient adventure with majestic sweep and sterling work by its colossal ensemble, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey imbues myth with primal human feeling.” Following a record-breaking box-office performance in its first two weeks, the movie later faced competition from the even bigger blockbuster Spider-Man: Brand New Day, but it managed to hold its ground.































































Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie?

Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country

Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.

🪜Parasite

🌀Everything Everywhere

☢️Oppenheimer

🐦Birdman

🪙No Country for Old Men

01

What kind of film experience do you actually want?
The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.





02

Which idea grabs you most in a film?
Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?





03

How do you like your story told?
Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.





04

What makes a truly great antagonist?
The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?





05

What do you want from a film’s ending?
The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?





06

Which setting pulls you in most?
Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.





07

What cinematic craft impresses you most?
Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.





08

What kind of main character do you root for?
The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.





09

How do you feel about a film that takes its time?
Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.





10

What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema?
The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?





The Academy Has Decided
Your Perfect Film Is…

Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

Parasite

You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.

Oppenheimer

You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

Birdman

You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

No Country for Old Men

You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

Five Movies Have Grossed More than $1 Billion at the Worldwide Box Office in 2026

Movie

Worldwide Box Office

Spider-Man: Brand New Day

$1.216 billion

Toy Story 5

$1.071 billion

Michael

$1.016 billion

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

$1.012 billion

The Odyssey

$1.009 billion

The Odyssey has grossed $430 million domestically and $580 million internationally so far, and is now the 65th movie in history to have grossed more than $1 billion worldwide. It’s the fifth movie to do so this year, after The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Michael, Toy Story 5, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day. By Sunday, August 9, The Odyssey is expected to pass the $450 million mark domestically and overtake Nolan’s second and third Batman movies worldwide to become his biggest-ever hit at the global box office. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.



Release Date

July 15, 2026

Runtime

173 minutes


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