Ireland tops global box office for opening weekend of The Odyssey

Ireland has topped the global box office as the country with the biggest opening weekend per capita for The Odyssey, taking €954k at cinemas across the Republic of Ireland and €69,000 in Northern Ireland.

With an estimated budget of €230 million, The Odyssey is Christopher Nolan’s biggest box office debut yet, taking just over its budget in revenue worldwide.

The film stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway and Zendaya. It is an adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem, which follows Odysseus, the Greek king of Ithaca, on his 20-year journey home after the Trojan War.

The Odyssey was released internationally over the weekend across more than 12,800 locations and 26,000 screens.

Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, John Leguizamo and Jon Bernthal also make appearances.

This is the first feature movie to be filmed entirely with Imax cameras, using 70mm film instead of digital projection. Nolan also opted to primarily use puppets and real-life structures instead of CGI, including multiple 35-foot tall Trojan Horses, a 60-foot tall Cyclops and several man-eating giants created through wirework and forced-perspective illusions.

“Few contemporary directors would attempt something this ambitious, strange or unapologetically mythic,” wrote Hot Press in a review of the film, “and few still could deliver spectacle on this scale while remaining interested in memory, grief and the stories we tell ourselves about heroism.”