MOVIE NEWS – Christopher Nolan’s three-hour, R-rated epic The Odyssey has broken an 11-year studio record held by Jurassic World, becoming the highest-grossing movie in Universal Pictures history. The Matt Damon-led film has reached roughly $1.685 billion worldwide, surpassing the $1.671 billion earned by Chris Pratt’s 2015 dinosaur blockbuster.
Major Hollywood studios do not see their all-time box office records change hands very often, and when they do, another massive franchise movie is usually responsible. Disney’s biggest performers, for example, have long been dominated by Avatar and Avengers films, while Warner Bros. has similarly watched one major brand replace another at the top, most recently with Barbie. A studio’s biggest movie is typically surpassed by a sequel, a superhero blockbuster, or another heavily established piece of intellectual property. That makes it particularly notable that Universal’s long-standing record has now fallen to Christopher Nolan’s standalone historical epic.
For years, Jurassic World looked like the kind of record that would require something extraordinary to beat. Colin Trevorrow’s 2015 blockbuster earned $1.67 billion worldwide and survived more than a decade of challengers, including the peak years of Fast & Furious, three additional Jurassic movies, and even the awards-fueled momentum of Oppenheimer. Universal has now officially confirmed that Nolan’s The Odyssey has moved beyond that benchmark. The three-hour epic is expected to finish Sunday at approximately $1.685 billion worldwide, compared with Jurassic World‘s $1.671 billion.
The Odyssey Is Now Universal’s Biggest Movie Ever
Roughly $601 million of The Odyssey‘s total has come from the domestic market, with more than $1 billion generated internationally. That places the film at No. 12 on the all-time worldwide box office chart, where almost every movie above it is either a sequel or a superhero release. Nolan’s film was already enormous when it opened in July, launching with $123.5 million domestically in what appears to be Universal’s biggest R-rated opening weekend ever. Over the two months since its release, the movie has multiplied its global opening by more than six and even managed to reclaim the worldwide No. 1 position during its eighth weekend.
The Odyssey also picked up several other major records along the way. It surpassed Deadpool & Wolverine to become the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever and then moved past The Dark Knight to become the biggest film of Christopher Nolan’s career outright. Universal is understandably celebrating the achievement, with NBCUniversal entertainment chairman Donna Langley saying that what Nolan and Emma Thomas created will “go down as one of the most ambitious and brilliantly executed films in cinematic history.” Langley also described the movie as “a generational event that galvanizes moviegoing itself.”
Chris Pratt Still Helped Power Universal’s Record-Breaking Year
Universal became the first studio to cross $4 billion globally in 2026 and has since pushed its annual total beyond $4.9 billion. The studio has produced three separate billion-dollar movies this year, and Chris Pratt happens to play a major role in one of them. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie became the first film of 2026 to cross $1 billion worldwide, with Pratt once again providing the voice of Mario. So while one of the actor’s signature blockbusters has now lost Universal’s all-time crown, another Pratt-led project has directly contributed to the studio’s extraordinary year.
None of that diminishes what Jurassic World accomplished. The movie held Universal’s record for 11 years, driven by the enduring nostalgia surrounding the Jurassic Park brand and by a star-making period in Chris Pratt’s career. There is even a strong argument that its extraordinary performance helped convince Universal that major, event-scale theatrical swings were worth pursuing again. The crown, however, now belongs to Christopher Nolan and The Odyssey, a three-hour, adult-oriented historical epic that accomplished something no other Universal release had managed in more than a decade.
Source: MovieWeb
