Director Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey has ‌topped the weekend’s ‌box ⁠office in the US and Canada.

The film grossed $US264.1 million ($378.6 million) in global ‌ticket sales on its opening weekend, including $US124.5 million in the US and Canada, Universal Pictures said.

The ‌film, based on the ancient Greek poem by Homer, stars Matt Damon as the Greek hero Odysseus, ‌and follows his perilous journey home after fighting the Trojan War.

It is Nolan’s first movie since the 2023 blockbuster Oppenheimer, which won Academy Awards in several categories including directing and best picture.

“There’s just palpable excitement across the domestic market this weekend for The Odyssey,” said Jim Orr, Universal’s president of domestic theatrical distribution.

The film had broad appeal with movie-goers. Photo: AAP

The film ‌topped the weekend’s ‌domestic box ⁠office, according to Rentrak.

It had broad appeal with movie-goers, with half ​of ticket-buyers between the ages of 18 and 34 years old, Orr told Reuters.

The Odyssey cost $US250 million to make.

It received an A CinemaScore from filmgoers at opening-night screenings, and has an audience rating of 97 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes.

The film represents Nolan’s biggest global opening of all time, without factoring in inflation, and ⁠his third-highest-grossing in the US and Canada, behind The Dark Knight ‌and The ​Dark Knight Rises.

Fans began snapping up tickets for the film a year ago when seats at ​select IMAX theatres ‌were put on sale.

IMAX said demand for tickets was so high, more than 50 theatres across ​North America added show times between midnight and 7am.

Universal said more than half the audience watched the film in an enhanced format, such as 70-millimetre IMAX.

IMAX chief executive ​Richard ​Gelfond said the company had booked $US50 million ​in advance ticket sales – its strongest pre-sales on record.

He credited the use of his company’s technology for generating more buzz around the movie.

“It was just a well-made – almost perfectly made – movie in many respects,” Gelfond said.

Most scholars believe the epic poem attributed to Homer was composed in the seventh or eighth century BC and was sung and passed on orally ​before it was written down.

Nolan’s film centres on a portion of Odysseus’s home-coming, where ​he encounters gods and monsters, ⁠storms and tragedy.

Anne Hathaway as Penelope and Tom Holland as Telemachus. Photo: AAP

Nolan’s quirk

Christopher Nolan’s wife Emma Thomas warns actors he will call them from an unknown number as he doesn’t own a smartphone.

That was the case for Matt Damon, who stars in The Odyssey as Odysseus.

The 55-year-old actor told People magazine that Thomas “had texted me, ‘Are you around for a call today?’ Because Chris famously doesn’t have a phone”.

Thomas “always gives you a heads-up if he’s going to call”, Damon said.

“Then you get a phone call from a nondescript number, because he’s just picking up a line at Universal Studios,” he said.

Nolan – who, in 2023, told The Hollywood Reporter he does not use a phone due to “distraction”, nor use text or email to communicate – said even he didn’t “know what number it’s going to be”.

He and Damon – who previously worked on the 2014 sci-fi/adventure Interstellar and the 2023 thriller Oppenheimer – spoke for “10 or 15 minutes” before Nolan revealed his plans to adapt The Odyssey, “only six months after Oppenheimer had gone through the Oscars and all of that”.

“I just thought we were catching up, which we did. And then he blurted out, ‘Yeah, I’m thinking of going back to work’. And I went, ‘Wait, already?’,” Damon said.

The Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus (Damon), the Greek king of Ithaca, and his long and perilous journey home to reunite with his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) following the Trojan War.

The ensemble cast is headed by Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway. Photo: AAP

But Nolan did not have Damon or Hathaway in mind when writing their characters.

“I try to just discover the characters through the process of writing,” he said.

“What I’ve found over the years is if you have an actor in mind – and obviously it’s very tempting, particularly when we work with great people before, it’s tempting to cast it as you are thinking about the script – but for me that always limits what the characters can be. Because then you’re writing to what you’ve seen an actor do before.”

It is only when the script is done that Nolan thinks about the actors who would best suit a role.

“You get to sit there and go, ‘OK, I wonder what Matt’s doing this week or should I give Anne a call?’. And that’s the fun of it,” he said.

—AAP