Named to one of the most influential and important stories of the Western world, few doubted The Odyssey would even flop at the box office. With a star-studded cast and the promise of meeting the mythical creatures and deities of Homer’s epic poems, moviegoers couldn’t wait to get into cinemas as soon as it landed.

As it goes, there was so much interest in Christopher Nolan’s take on The Odyssey that it flew to a $124 million opening weekend. Best of all for its investors, that was just the North America tally for the film. Worldwide, it hit over $264 million, marking a new high for Nolan’s box-office outings. This is despite the R rating domestically.

Headlines about the successful opening weekend for The Odyssey seemed to have a shimmer of surprise about them. Yet, when looking at the fascination with its source material and the marketing’s huge push for its record use of IMAX, perhaps this being Nolan’s biggest film launch shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

An Enduring Passion for Ancient Greek Tales

It’s impossible to understate the importance of Homer’s poems even 3,000 years on from when he first started telling them. So relatable and so humanising are The Iliad and The Odyssey that they’ve retained their ability to compel us even in this very different modern world.

As a different point of fascination, the Ancient Greek myths have also remained very popular. Their fantastical elements and grandiose characters are still iconic and instantly recognisable. Yet, much like the stories from the Age of Heroes like The Odyssey, the deities come off as very human and relatable, giving them an enduring appeal.

The movie from Christopher Nolan is just the most recent showcase of this fascination being ignited in pop culture again and again. You can look to the 2010 film Clash of the Titans getting over $490 million worldwide, the backlash to the modernised story in KAOS when Netflix swung its axe, or the collection of Greek myth online games.

Gates of Olympus and Amazing Link Zeus headline, but they’re joined by Area Link Phoenix Firestorm, Athena Ascending, Hot as Hades, Strength of Hercules, and several others that stack the library of the online casino in Canada. The reason there are so many of them is that the developers see a demand that needs to be met.

The general public remains fascinated by these old tales and seeks them out in their spare time. Naturally, productions with visuals are among the most popular, but it’ll always come down to the way the story is told. Being faithful to the core themes that have enabled these stories to endure for so long is what makes and breaks modern interpretations. Zeus needs to be depicted as mighty, Odysseus as loyal with a touch of hubris, and so on.

Given the way the film goes, how Nolan’s writing has subverted the themes of the original works and cut out much of the admittedly huge story, perhaps this aspect of the appeal will fade with word of mouth. Then again, with it being shot in stunning locations and there being a fair few fantastical elements kept, maybe that won’t matter.

Powered by the IMAX Experience

IMAX has been around for quite a while, but The Odyssey is the first film to ever be shot entirely in IMAX with its massive, extremely noisy cameras that can only shoot for three minutes at a time. It was a huge challenge for Nolan, but he did end up with nearly three hours of wholly IMAX film to show the world.

This has been a boon for cinemas. From regular IMAX to the full 70mm IMAX, cinemas have been flooded with ticket orders for these relatively niche screenings. Two metro theatres in Vancouver said that they sold out advance tickets a year ago despite tickets being priced at $30 each. In the UK, IMAX costs £34 each ($45).

North American box-office reporting only covers the total of tickets sold, rather than how many individual tickets have sold. We’ll have to wait on the official reporting from French cinema to get a better look at just how many people went to see The Odyssey. Even so, by the close of its second Monday, it had eclipsed $300 million domestically.

Already estimated to be in the black with over $666 million worldwide within two weeks of its premiere, The Odyssey is proving, once again, that there’s still a tremendous draw to the tales of Ancient Greece. Perhaps its success, despite the $250 million budget, will inspire more studios to invest heavily in these classic stories.