Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' Sails Back Into IMAX 70mm on December 11

Odysseus took ten years to get home. Christopher Nolan's version is coming back in five months.

Universal announced Thursday that "The Odyssey" returns to theaters nationwide on Dec. 11, on more than 1,000 screens across the U.S. and Canada in all formats — IMAX and the scarce, coveted IMAX 70mm prints included. If you missed the big-format run last summer, or you caught it on a regular screen and have been quietly mad about it since, this is the second chance, and everybody involved knows exactly what it is worth.

Because the numbers behind this movie stopped being normal a while ago. "The Odyssey" opened July 17 and went on to gross $626 million in North America and $1.8 billion worldwide. That makes it the highest-grossing film of Nolan's career, passing "The Dark Knight Rises." It makes it Universal's highest-grossing release of all time — the studio announced in September that it had passed "Jurassic World" for the global crown, even though "Jurassic World" still holds the studio's domestic record. And it makes it the biggest R-rated film in box-office history, full stop: a nearly three-hour adaptation of a 2,800-year-old Greek poem, carried by a director's name and a cast, outgrossing every franchise machine on the planet this year except one — it stands as the second-biggest film of 2026, behind only "Spider-Man: Brand New Day."

The IMAX story is its own record book. "The Odyssey" was the first narrative feature shot entirely on IMAX film cameras — not a few showcase sequences, the whole film — and audiences treated the format like a concert ticket. It delivered the biggest domestic opening ever for IMAX 70mm, and IMAX's highest-grossing run for any film, with $550 million of that $1.8 billion coming from IMAX screens alone. That is why December matters: IMAX 70mm engagements are scarce by design, the summer run sold out its best seats fast, and Universal already proved the appetite once with a limited IMAX return in early October. This one is not limited. It is a thousand screens.

The strangest part of the plan is the calendar. The film arrives for home viewing on Nov. 17 — premium video on demand, 4K and DVD, Deadline reports — which means that by Dec. 11, anyone who wants "The Odyssey" can have it on the television in their living room. Universal is bringing it back to theaters anyway. That is either confidence or a dare, and with this film it has mostly been both: the studio is wagering that a movie shot for the biggest screens in the world does not shrink just because it is available smaller, and that the people who watched it at home will be the first ones in line to see what it actually looks like at full size.

Awards season is the other half of the bet. The re-release lands as the Oscar race heats up, with the film expected to contend across the major categories, best picture included. Variety's awards editor Clayton Davis has it nominated in nearly every major category and winning several — a prediction, not a result, but the kind of prediction that fills theaters when voters and audiences are paying the closest attention of the year. A December victory lap, in the format the film was built for, is as much a campaign stop as a re-release.

None of it works without the cast on the poster. Matt Damon leads as Odysseus, the king of Ithaca fighting his way home after the Trojan War, in an ensemble that runs Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong'o and Charlize Theron. Nolan and Emma Thomas produced through Syncopy. It is a myth Hollywood tells about a myth — the oldest story in the Western canon, told with the newest cameras in the building — and the box office says the combination was not a risk. It was a coronation.

So the practical part, because this is a watch story as much as a money story: Dec. 11, more than 1,000 screens, every format, IMAX 70mm where you can find it. The 70mm seats are the ones that will go first — they did in July, they did in October, and there is no reason December plays any different. Odysseus eventually made it home. The movie is making the trip back out. Get the big screen this time.