Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey opened with $264.1 million in worldwide ticket sales, according to a Universal Pictures figure reported by Reuters, undercutting months of online claims that the film’s casting and politics would sink it.
The three-hour Universal release had become a culture-war target on X before opening weekend. Elon Musk and other critics objected to what they called “historical inaccuracy,” with much of the anger aimed at Lupita Nyong’o, who plays Helen of Troy, and Elliot Page, who plays Sinon. WIRED reported that the two actors together account for about 10 minutes of screen time.
The criticism was always a strange fit for Homer’s story, which is full of gods, monsters, witches, and the dead, but online outrage is not known for its respect for genre boundaries. Critics also attacked the movie for supposed Hollywood “wokeness,” objected to its Americanized dialogue, and revived complaints around classicist Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation of The Odyssey, the first English version by a woman, according to WIRED.
Box office beat the boycott
The boycott campaign did not show up in the opening numbers. Reuters reported that Universal said the movie brought in $264.1 million globally over its first weekend. The film was made on a reported $250 million production budget, with marketing costs reported at $125 million.
Some conservative commentators adjusted after the opening. Forbes reported that Ben Shapiro, a frequent critic of diversity and “woke” politics, described Nolan’s film as a major achievement. Others went looking for a different explanation.
On Monday, an anonymous X account claimed the movie’s ticket sales were being faked through bought-out theater seats, citing screenshots of unverified Reddit posts about sparsely attended screenings and unavailable seats. The account also claimed the film was already “$400 million in the hole.” No evidence cited in the post established that Universal had purchased seats to inflate demand.
The allegation would require Universal to spend additional money on top of the film’s production and marketing costs to simulate success at the box office. That is a mechanism, technically. It is not evidence.
Musk pitches a Grok version
Musk then pointed to a different solution: remake The Odyssey with AI. After an X user posted roughly three minutes of AI-generated scenes depicting white characters speaking in British accents, Musk wrote that “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
Grok is the AI system from Musk’s xAI. The proposed film would come through Grok Imagine, according to Musk’s post. He did not provide a production plan, release model, rights framework, or evidence that the system can generate a coherent feature-length movie by year’s end.
The idea also would not be first to market. Variety reported that AI studio Fountain 0 plans to release an AI-generated feature called Odyssey: The Fall online this summer.
Nolan, meanwhile, has positioned his movie in the opposite direction. Fortune reported that the production emphasized practical filmmaking, and The Hollywood Reporter has quoted Nolan criticizing AI-made entertainment as “slop.” Studio executives may still see generative AI as a way to cut costs and increase output. Nolan’s opening weekend gives them a less convenient data point: audiences paid for the expensive human version.
This story draws on original reporting from WIRED.
